external USB drive for XP & mac

  • Thread starter Thread starter DorbL
  • Start date Start date
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DorbL

I have an external USB drive. It was set-up originally for Windows
& works well on every XP box that I've tried it on. However, on two
new Mac PowerBooks, the files can be read, but the macs cannot write
to the drive. Is there a utility (for the Mac) of a setting (that I
can set on the ext. drive) or...? that will allow r/w access from a
new Mac?

(Note: we even tried it from the Windows side through VMWare.)

Please advise.
 
I have an external USB drive. It was set-up originally for Windows
& works well on every XP box that I've tried it on. However, on two
new Mac PowerBooks, the files can be read, but the macs cannot write
to the drive. Is there a utility (for the Mac) of a setting (that I
can set on the ext. drive) or...? that will allow r/w access from a
new Mac?

(Note: we even tried it from the Windows side through VMWare.)

Please advise.
Click to expand...

Consider posting in a group where this is not off-topic?



































Ever consider googling "mac write ntfs"
 
Consider posting in a group where this is not off-topic?

Ever consider googling "mac write ntfs"
Click to expand...


Check to see how you have your external drive formatted. If it's NTFS it
should probably have no trouble writing. However, if it's FAT there may be a
problem.

Additionally, if you decide that you want only to use the external drive
for the new Powerbook you could reformat the disk with the Mac and that
should get it writing as well as reading. Or the Disk Utility on the
Powerbook has the ability to divide the drive into partitions, so you
partition one part of it to use with the mac and leave the rest partioned
for the PC.
 
Check to see how you have your external drive formatted. If it's NTFS it
should probably have no trouble writing. However, if it's FAT there may be a
problem.
Click to expand...

NO. It's the other way around. You can read/write FAT, NTFS is read
only. There are both free and non-free utils avail to write to NTFS.
But the standard OS can only read NTFS.
 
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