Anonymous Posted on Dec 27, 2008

Formatted (on PC) 1TB WD hard drive cannot be altered on Macbook

A newly purchased 1TB WD External Hard Drive would not allow files to be stored on it despite being virtually empty. Viewed blogs on this and opted to re-format the drive. After this I could load files on to from a PC but when then attached to my Macbook Pro (I am gradually changing over to Mac but still have a PC desktop) I could see and open files but not change any of these nor back up my macbook files (main reason for purchasing the drive. A solution would be most appreciated.

Anonymous May 11, 2010

You may not have "permissions" to copy to the information from your drive to the mac.

BEFORE you do the following, try it on one insignificant file on the drive to see if it causes problems... (just in case)

Select the hard drive on your Mac and click Apple + i. Are the files locked? If so, click on the "lock" icon, unlock them and apply to enclosed items. (enter password).

For safety, select an insignificant file and click apple + i. Try the unlock first. If you still can't copy the file, click apple + i again and make sure "everyone" has permissions to the file. Select everyone to have permissions. If one of these work, eject the drive and try it again on your PC to make sure it functions properly.

Do you have a backup of the files on the drive just incase??
I would defiantly back it up before you start fooling around with it.
Is the drive compatible with both Mac and PC?
Anonymous May 11, 2010

Clarification:

When I say "select the hard drive on your mac" You select the external hard drive you are having problems with and NOT your actual Mac hard drive <-- that is crucial.

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Anonymous

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Posted on Dec 27, 2008

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What OS are you running? What is it formatted as FAT32 or NTFS and how big are the partitions. Various operating systems, hardware and formatting schemes have different limitations. If you want to use the drive in Leopard formatted with NTFS which is the only way to create partitions larger than 20 or 30 GB you may need to install an NTFS file system driver like FUSE.
The other option is to format it as HFS and install Macdrive 7 in Windows to use Mac formatted drives in Windows.

Hope this helps.

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