Copying files from MAC to PC?

My question is somewhat the opposite of what many have asked: I have a number of photos on my MacBook Pro that I want to transfer to an external HDD that can be retrieved by my PC. The external drive I have (a Western Digital 250 GB) is formatted in NTFS. The MBP treats this drive as 'Read-Only', and won't let me write files to it. Is there any work-around for this? Is there a setting that I need to adjust? In general if I want to transfer files in this manner, what do I need to do to make it happen?

Make a back-up of all the data on the drive.
Reformat the drive (which will delete all the data) into a FAT32 format.
Use your Mac to do this and use the MS-DOS format.
Windows XP has built-in limitations when formatting FAT32 drives and you would need third party tools.

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Copying files from Mac to PC network shared drives.

Copying files from Mac to PC network shared drives.
We have shared mounted drives in AIX Fusion that we can pull files from and copy to the mac, however we can not copy files from the mac to the drives.
“Error in user parameter list (-50)” With MS DOS-Formatted Volume.”
The drives are mapped on the mac using SMB. We can go to the files on the mac and use “save as” and this works and saves them on the shared drives.
We can not drag and copy them to the shared drives. Every time it fails and we get the above error. We can create folders but not move any files.
When we look up the error, it is referring to certain characters that can but used in a Max OS X filename and are not allowed in MS-DOS filenames. We are not using any of the characters not allowed.
The drives have all the basic set up in AIX, RWC. All the PC's we have can drag files to and from all our shared drives.

Either install software which enables the Mac to write to NTFS drives, or MacDrive on the PC, or reformat any drives you'll be using to share files between the computers as either FAT32 or exFAT.
(88270)

Copying files from Mac to Windows-invalid file names

Unfortunately, my boss likes Windows more than Macs, so we have puchased some new Dell computers to replace older G4 Macs.
I'm having trouble copying existing files from a Mac (OS 10.4)to the shared drive on the Windows XP computer. I'm getting an error message:
"You can't copy the item 'filename' because the name is too long or includes characters that the disk can't display." Sometimes it doesn't give a filename, it gives a similar message "Some items couldn't be copied..."
I assume the person has used some "illegal" file names such as "Meeting minutes 10/7/07" Or maybe we have too many folders inside of folders.
QUESTION: Is there a correct/better way to copy large quantites of files/folders from Mac to Windows? Or is there a program that will look at the Mac files and alert me to wrong or too long files names?
Other ideas to copy these files?
thanks,
Bill

You can use a freeware utility like Renamer4Mac or BatchRename'em both of which have built-in filters that will rename files for Windows compatibility.
Thank you... This sounded to me like it would fix the problem, so I downloaded both and looked at them. However, the manual/help file is very sparse, so I don't know if it will do what I want to and how it would do it.
1. I couldn't find any option in either program to: Look at all files in selected folder, and list any invalid file names for Windows.
2. There doesn't seem to be an option to "rename files without bad Windows characters" or "Remove invalid for Windows characters"
I just couldn't find any explanation of how it was offering to rename the files. I can't rename all files to sequential names, that would make it hard to find a file later.
Thank you,
Bill

Unable to copy files from mac to PC

Hi,
I have a mac (osx 10.6.3) and a PC (Windows Vista) connected to my local home network. On the PC there are some shared folders. I can connect to the PC using the "connect to server" dialog and I can get all those PC folders mounted in my desktop (apparently in read/write mode). Dragging files from the PC to my mac works nicely but, surprisingly, there is no way to drag files from my mac to the pc.
When I drag a file from my mac to PC I'm always getting a dialog asking me to introduce my password to "allow Finder to make changes". I think it makes no sense because Finder should make no changes at all to copy a file to the PC and, on the other hand, I've read/write permissions on those files. After typing my password I get a second dialog: "One or more items can’t be copied to “Movies” because you don’t have permission to read them. Do you want to copy the items you are allowed to read?". Again, it makes no sense because I do have read/write permissions on those files. Unfortunately, any file is transferred after clicking "continue". This behavior is independent of file size, file type and permissions. No way to get any file transferred to the PC. What I'm doing wrong?
Thanks in advance for your help.

Hi, paullopez.
Thanks for your answer. Unfortunately, in my previous post, I forgot to comment that I had macFuse and ntfs-3g already installed in my mac. I wonder if the problem is related to the osx implementation of SAMBA. Or, alternatively, ntfs-3g may be not able to work with samba mounted volumes? I have very little experience in sharing files via SAMBA so any help is welcomed.

Cannot copy files from mac via smb

I have a very strange effect since I went from 10.6 to 10.7. (I am on 10.7.2 now).
My Windows 7 PC can no longer copy files via SMB from the Mac to Windows.
I first thought this has to do with McAfee Endpoint Encryption, since the error message is
"Catastrophic Failure" (nothing else) in a small popup window which says McAfee Endpoint
Encryption in the title bar.
But then I discovered I can also not copy files to my Ubuntu system. The error message I get on
Ubuntu (11.10) is: "Operation not supported".
Both systems (the windows and the ubuntu system) however can copy via SMB from other systems
or among each other. It's actually from the Mac with which I have problems.
Nothing has changed for my Sharing Settings, but the only way currently to get files from my Mac
to the other systems is through an external harddisk, not over the network.
I see messages in other forums talking about that SMB in 10.7 is broken and Apple changed
to an unstable code base, but I can't find real helpful information on what the source of this
problem could be.
Any ideas?

The guy who controls the GPL licensing created a new scheme to prevent hardware manufacturers from limiting users to what the manufacturer wanted the users to be able to do (see Tivoisation). Samba, the code that Apple used for SMB took up that licensing scheme. So, Apple had to find another method in Lion.
Try turning on the Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) in your windows boxes and use that instead
I don't have much need for smb file sharing, so I don't have many details. I have seen hints that certain passwords don't work, but I don't know why.
Some useful sites for possibly finding a solution are MacWindows and MacInTouch.

Copying Files from Mac to Windows

We are moving to an AD network and need to copy user data from older Xserves to Windows 2008 R2 servers. Is there a program or preferred method that anyone has found to make a good, automated, bulk copy from Mac to 2008 R2 servers? We are concerned that the file extended attributes are copied correctly AND that there is a 'update' option to only copy changes.

Try dragging and dropping on a test folder with attributes that you need.
My hunch is that it will work fine if you just "Select all", Copy and paste.
But try on a test folder first.

How do I copy files from Mac Book Mountain Lion 10.8.3 to a Seagate External Hard Drive

please help

Have you connected the drive to your computer? Is the drive formatted for a Mac? Can you see the drive either on the desktop or in the sidebar of a Finder window? Are you able to (double) click on the drive icon to open it up in Finder? If yes to these, you should just be able to drag and drop.
charlie

I am unable to copy files from my macbook pro to my external hard disk.

I am unable to copy files from my macbook pro to my external hard disk. I tried to copy a movie 800mb in size to my EDD and it shows the loading box and it says zero kb loaded out of 800mb and sometimes it loads a a few kb of the file, then after a while it ejects my hard disk and gives a message saying you should have ejected it properly. and it sometimes gives this message
"The Finder can’t complete the operation because some data in “....” can’t be read or written.
(Error code -36)".
This happens with a range of files if they are more than a few mb in size, so I am pretty sure its not the file problem. It also occurs sometimes when i try to copy from my EDD to my mac.
I have tried everything. I formatted my EDD to MS-DOS (FAT) format because i need to use it with mac and windows. I tried resetting The SMC and the PRAM and NVRAM. I tried verify and disk repair on disk utility. But the same thing happens over again and it is really frustrating. The problem doesnt happen with my PC.
My EDD is an Apollo 320GB hard drive from Imation.
Also are there any particular EDD brands that may not have this issue with MACs and can be used on mac and PC?
Thanks in advance!

Hey guys,
So this is follow up from my debarkle with the EDD. I found out my problem with copying files from Mac to EDD and vice versa was a result of a not so good EDD ( i had an apollo hard drive from imation) that was not very compatible with macs. So i did my research and found out that the best hard drives were Western Digital and Seagate. I bought the newest western digital EDD 1TB and formated it to FAT32 and guess what...no problems so far. The only problem is that FAT32 format doesn't copy files larger than about 4 gigs so i couldnt copy a movie from my brothers computer onto my EDD that was 1080p. You could probably resolve that by partitioning a small part of your hard drive in ExFAT? but yeah, hopefully that helped guys.
Aaisha

New to Mac....can transfer files from Toshiba to Mac. But can't transfer files from Mac to Toshiba??? Can anyone help please?

New Mac user......own a new iMac and iPad and still use a Toshiba Laptop. Can transfer files from Toshiba to iMac but can't transfer files other direction?

Are you doing these transfers over a Network connection, the systems are networked together over your Home LAN? Or are you doing it with an external drive?
If an external drive Mac OS X can READ Windows NTFS formatted drives but can NOT WRITE to them. So you can co[py files to the drive on your Win PC and READ them on the Mac but Mac OS X can not Write to that drive so you can't copy files from Mac to that drive.
For an external drive to work on both systems, be able to Read and Write from/to that drive, it has to be formatted either FAT32 or exFAT.

Leopard / Bootcamp / Vista / Copy Files Between Mac OS X and Windows

On the apple page it says I can copy files from mac to windows?
"Copy Files Between Mac OS X and Windows
Copy, open, modify, or delete files in Mac OS X that you saved to your Windows partition. Leopard understands the Windows FAT32 disk format."
I tried installing Vista in bootcamp, but it says I cannot install in FAT32? So i format it to NTFS.
So here's my question, Can i still copy files between mac and pc, if I format into NTFS or am using vista?
Thanks

I am quite a simple soul really and very easily pleased.
All I seek is a partition of some sort that I can save all my created work to - whether in XP Pro or OS X 10.5. But it has to be a large partition - probably a single partition on a large drive.
It would be sweeter still for Spotlight to do what it does (and it does on a FAT partition) and sweeter still for Time Machine to be very user friendly and do what it presently does not do and include created files into the TM.
Now that really would be very pleasant. Very pleasant indeed.

Problem copying file from MacOSX 10.6.7 to WindosXP shared folder

Hello Group,
I recently switched to mac os and I need to frequently copy files from mac to Windows XP shared network folder. I am getting following error
Quote:
One or more items can’t be copied to “destfolder(in WinXP)” because you don’t have permission to read them. Do you want to copy the items you are allowed to read?
These are the steps I followed:
-> Finder-> Go to server-> SMB: Windows XP IP
-> Open the destination folder in WIndows system
-> Copy files from mac system to Windows system connected as per above steps
I am struggling to copy files. ANy help would really be appreciated.
regards,
RB

You mount the remote windows directory and copy files conveniently.
mount -t cifs -o username=<win user>,password=<win pwd> //winserver/dir /winserver/dir
where <win user> : Remote Windows Login Id
<win pwd>: Windows login pwd
//winserver/dir : Remote windows server and directory, you would like to access. You need to share it before mounting in MAC.
/winserver/dir : Local diectory. You need to create it before mounting.
Let me know if you need more info

I have macbook pro 13" I want to know how to copy files from my mac to the external Toshiba Hard Drive. I can't even delete files from my external hard drive. please help me my macbook HD is almost full and I have to copy my images to the Toshiba HD

I have macbook pro 13" I want to know how to copy files from my mac to the external Toshiba Hard Drive. I can't even delete files from my external hard drive. please help me my macbook HD is almost full and I have to copy my images to the Toshiba HD

To delete files from your external HDD, attach it to your MBP and drag the unwanted files to trash and then empty trash.
Then you select the files that you want to transfer by 'drag and drop' to the external HDD and trash the files on your MBP.
Ciao.

How do I copy files from my old mac to my new mac?

How do I copy files from my old mac to my new mac?

Use the Migration Assistant, or the Setup Assistant, or use a network, Target Disk mode, or an external drive to move them manually.
(126811)

HT2518 i would like to copy files from an external hard drive to my Mac. I intend to do this several times. Does Mac identify this files which have already be copied over or does it re- copy them every time?

i would like to copy files from an external hard drive to my Mac. I intend to do this several times. Will Mac copy the same files every time or can it segregate and only copy new files from the external hard drive?

Only copies the file or files you select. The selection will remain unless you change it in case you wish to repeat the same copy to another location. Multiple and different copy operations can be run simultaneously.

Cannot copy files from my work Mac to my PowerBook at home using ARD 3.1

I'm having an issue copying files from my work Mac to my PowerBook at home using ARD 3.1. Both machines are running OS 10.4.10 and have all of the available updates have been applied. When I connect to the Mac at work using ARD, I can see everything without any problems. However, when I attempt to copy a file onto my PowerBook desktop, I lose my connection to it and ARD tries to re-establish a connection and just keep looping. I'm stumped as to why this keeps happening. When I try the above from work using my PowerBook, there are no problems. Could this problem be related to my DSL Carrier (Verizon). Anyone have any ideas? Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Jeff thanks for that, the only problem is I cant update any of the system software at work
And I cant just copy the folders over and use my iPod as a hard drive to take them home and put them on my iTunes as the file names on some tracks are to long

Copying files from MAC to PC?

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