[SOLVED] new macbook air wont let me move files onto existing external hard drive

[sarahbee]

I previously owned an older macbook which I had the ability to both copy files off of and put new files onto my external hard drive. This external hard drive is formatted so I could use it with both my old mac and my computer at work which is PC (which is I'm assuming this FAT32 format or whatever its called).
Now I have a new macbook air, but it doesn't much like my external hard drive. It will let me take files off my external hard drive to put on the mac, but it won't let me save new files from my new mac to the hard drive.
I really hope theres something I can do which won't involve reformatting this external hard drive, or is my only option to copy everything off the hard drive onto my new mac, reformat it (which I don't know how to do), then put everything back on the hard drive?

 

[Ijack]

Don't assume the format of the external drive - use Disk Utility to check what it is and then report back. This will help people to advise you. It sounds to me as if it may be NTFS which, by default, OS X can read but not write to.

 

[sarahbee]

Don't assume the format of the external drive - use Disk Utility to check what it is and then report back. This will help people to advise you. It sounds to me as if it may be NTFS which, by default, OS X can read but not write to.

Yes Disk Utility says the hard drive is NTFS. So does anyone have suggestions about how to get OS X to write to the hard drive, and not just read from??

 

[Ijack]

There is a way to do it for free: http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57588773-263/how-to-manually-enable-ntfs-read-and-write-in-os-x/ . However, some people have had problems with this approach, reporting possible corruption of the disk. An alternative is to use a paid application such as Paragon NTFS for Mac: http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/ . The third alternative is to reformat your drive as FAT32; this would involve losing all the data on it. Or you could convert the partition with software such as Aomei: http://www.disk-partition.com/resource/convert-ntfs-to-fat32-partition.html . Personally I would never use such software without having a backup of any important data.

 

[iskra]

Alternatively if you want native support under both OS X (from 10.6.5 and up) and Windows (Vista and up) you may just find way to copy all your files from your external HDD to some different drive and format it to exFAT.

Then you'll be able to write to it natively from both systems.

 

[TTeddy]

If your using a Seagate PHD, they have a patch which will allow your MAc to read it.