Can i delete a file on my external disk?

I have a toshiba external hard disk. When i plug it into my macbook air, i can only see my documents and copy them to the macbook or copy files from macbook to hard disk. But i can't delete any file on my external disk. How can i can do it?

It sounds like you originally used this drive with a Windows PC. Drives formatted as Windows NTFS can be read by a Mac but not written to (files cannot be deleted). If you want to keep the files that are on the drive, you can use Paragon NTFS (it's about $20) to install a driver allowing your Mac to write to the drive and delete files. This will allow you to continue to use the drive with both Mac and PC.
Or, if you have copied off all the files you need, you can use Disk Utility in your Utilities folder to wipe and reformat the drive to Mac format. You will no longer be able to use the drive with a PC.
Matt

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