Portable hard drive, read only problem

i purchased a 80gb portable hard drive while in santiago and the only computer i had available was a pc, so i offloaded around 73GB worth of RAW files, foldered according to date. everything went well, took the selects off and have been editing.

now i’ve backed the take up on another, larger hard drive and i wanted to clear this one. only problem is, it keeps telling me (on my MacBook Pro) that the 80gb is a read only, and cannot be modified. i can’t drop new folders on, i can’t delete anything.

the only time it lets me modify it is when it’s on my fiance’s PC laptop. now i figure this is because i used it first with a PC. under the info area, it says it’s format is Windows NT Filesystem.

is there a way to undo this so it can function like my Seagate and Western Digital? i’m buying her a macbook laptop and won’t be able to use a PC to modify the contents. if i format it on a PC, then plug it into my MBP, would that work?

the brand is Faccia (i think). google didn’t help any. thought someone might know how to unlock the hard drive from read only and allow me to access it.

thanks.

by mustafah abdulaziz at Fri May 16 02:59:57 UTC 2008 (ed. May 19 2008) Philadelphia, United States | Bookmark this | Digg this |

you need to reformat it to macs journaling file system.

just plug it in and open “disk utility”

click on the drive in the left menu, go to the “erase” tab and make sure the volume format menu is set to mac os journaling extended.

i cant remember if windows can properly mount osx volumes so you may not be able to edit files in windows… but it sounds like that is no problem.

by skyler b. ramin | 16 May 2008 03:05 | Vancouver, Canada |

Wouldn`t reformatting erase all the files on the drive?

by Tomoko Yamamoto | 16 May 2008 04:05 | Baltimore, MD, United States |

indeed it would, which is the purpose of the inquiry unless i am mistaken.

“and i wanted to clear this one”

by skyler b. ramin | 16 May 2008 05:05 | Vancouver, Canada |

Hi Mustafah!

Before you go ahead and blow up the partition and/or reformat the drive, you might want to consider how you will be using the drive in the future.

OSX can read, but cannot write to NTFS partitions (without third party software like MacFUSE).
BTW, MacFuse can be found here:
http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/
This first solution works, but is marginally supported, and it is probably best to be on the tech savvy to put in place.

Second option: you attach the drive to your better half’s PC and reformat the drive in FAT32. You should then be able to read/write to this drive with either your GF’s PC or your Mac.

Third option: blow it all up and reformat the drive on your Mac. Works great for you, but now your GF cannot use the drive, and PCs won’t be able to even read from it without third party software such as MacDrive:
http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/

If it was my gear, I would go for option2 as you can keep taking the drive on the road, to internet cafes, etc….

I seldom work on Macs these days, but IIRC, this should cover it all.

by Olivier Boulot | 16 May 2008 09:05 | Paris, France |

thanks a mil. i’m going with oliver’s second option. seems the most useful.

thanks again for the help.

by mustafah abdulaziz | 19 May 2008 07:05 | Philadelphia, United States |

you may have trouble using a fat32 volume larger then 32gb and you cant make files larger then 4gb.

you said you were getting another mac anyhow, you can always use a little usb drive to take files to a printer etc and keep these larger drives running on a “modern” file system. osx’s journaling system (or even ntfs) is a much better system then fat32 and provides better performance, space usage and other features.

by skyler b. ramin | 19 May 2008 14:05 (ed. May 19 2008) | Vancouver, Canada |

sascha,

the formatting on her PC didn’t work, so i used Disk Utility and took care of it on my laptop. finally, the OSX Journaling System worked and i’m dumping stuff on.

i’ll have to see if it still gets read by PC. if so, i’m a happy man.

by mustafah abdulaziz | 19 May 2008 16:05 | Philadelphia, United States |

m-
it won’t get read on the pc without above mentioned macdrive software. though as i said if you are transitioning to an all mac world its not really a big deal. you can still use pen drives to move files around when its a must and keep this large drive for your regular backups.
-s

by skyler b. ramin | 19 May 2008 18:05 | Vancouver, Canada |