HT4796 I am unable to copy a folder on mac to an external hdd or even to a usb

I am unable to copy a folder on mac to an external hdd or even to a usb

If the external drives are formatted for Windows (NTFS), you can't write to them natively on a Mac. Your options are (1) to back up and reformat the devices as FAT32 or ExFAT, or (2) to install third-party software that enables writing to an NTFS volume (not recommended.)

Similar Messages

  • HT1751 unable to copy iTunes folder from mac to external hard drive, says hard drive can't be modified

    when attempting to copy itunes folder to external hard drive, response is unable to copy file, hard drive can't be modified. What does that mean and how to I use external HD to transfer itunes library to new PC?

    The drive is probably formated as NTFS, and your Mac doesn't have an NTFS write driver installed. Why not transfer the folder over your network?
    tt2

  • 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.

  • I formatted my hdd and forgot to copy my iphone back up to an external hdd

    I formatted my hdd and forgot to copy my iphone back up to an external hdd  i want to get my iphone back up back  any help

    See Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device.
    Or does your phone need restoring right now?
    tt2

  • File sharing - unable to copy photo folder

    Hi!
    I'm using File Sharing to connect my iMac to my mother's iMac.
    I'm trying to copy a folder called "Mom Photos" (sub-folder of the main Pictures folder) to my computer. I created a user name and password on her iMac that I use to login from my iMac. Once logged in, when I click on the "Mom Photos" folder and try to copy and paste it on my computer, I see the following error message: "The items on the Clipboard can't be pasted to this location. One or more of the items may have been deleted or are no longer available."
    When I created my user name on her iMac, I set the privileges to "Read and Write." 
    If I open the "Mom Photos" folder and select all the individual sub-folders within, copy and paste them to a folder on my iMac, I see the following message: "One or more items can't be copied to "Pictures" because you don't have permission to read them, Do you want to copy the items you are allowed to read?"
    Thank you for any help!

    Not being able to copy the folder itself would suggest that it has some other file, probably hidden, that is stopping the procedure. You could go up one level and perform the same action, but if this next level up is the Pictures folder then it might be best not to do this as the iPhoto library is also included within the Pictures folder.
    One possible workaround would be to create yet another folder within the Pictures folder and then copy the "Mom Photos" folder inside this. Then when you do the Apply to Enclosed Items for this new folder, the "Mom's Photos" folder should now be available to copy.
    If this still doesn't help then there is a Terminal command called change mode (chmod) that can be used to change the permissions on this folder. This would require to be on your mums iMac and to use her account, as you will need to authenticate to complete the task. It would be best if you can complete the operation without using Terminal but if using the GUI doesn't succeed then Terminal may be your next best option.

  • How do i copy a folder in Pictures to an external drive

    I am new to Macs. I have a folder in Pictures that I want to send or copy to an external hard drive. I copied the folder to the desktop and tried dragging it onto the external but it would not move. Help!

    If I reformet it will I be in danger of losing the data stored on it?
    Yes! Reformatting a drive will always delete everything, so you'll have to copy the contents of the drive someplace else before formatting.
    If it is formatted as a FAT32 will it then be able to be used on both a mac and windows platform?
    Yes, FAT32 is the format of choice when you need to use the drive with both Mac OS X and Windows. Be aware though, that FAT32 has some limitations, e.g. a maximum file size of 4 GB which could be a problem when you need to store huge video files.
    And if this is all okay, then how do I reformat the drive to a FAT32?
    After you made a backup of the contents of your drive, open "Disk Utility" from "/Applications/Utilities", select the drive in the source list, click on the tab called "Delete" and chose the format "MS-DOS File System" from the Format dropdown.

  • How can I copy files from my Mac to my external HD?

    I just bought a MacBook Air. Now I want to copy some files from my Mac to my external HD. And I cannot do it. Maybe the problem is on the authorization. How can I fix it?

    what format is your external drive in?  if it's on a NTFS format - it become read only.
    format/erase your external drive to exFAT if you share this drive with a Windows PC.
    If you're not sharing this drive with a PC - then format it to Mac OS extended journaled.
    use disk utility to do this.
    before you format your drive - make sure whatever files you have in it are backed up.

  • My media folder keeps changing from my external HDD back to my cpu.  How do I keep it on the external HDD?

    itunes keeps changing my media folder from my external hdd back to the cpu's hdd. I want to permanently change it to the external hdd.  A while back, I didn't have this problem.  Any suggestions?

    You should be importing all pics taken with the iphone to your computer regularly as you would with any digital camera.
    iOS: Importing personal photos and videos from iOS devices to your computer

  • Unable to copy iTunes folder to external WD My Book drive

    No idea what's going on here. If I attempt to copy my iTunes folder to an external HD it fails with the error message
    "The operation cannot be completed because you do not have sufficient priviledges for some of the items"
    If I attempt to copy a single (artist) folder it fails with the same message after creating the destination folder (though empty)
    If I manually copy the contents (songs) of a folder from the iMac to the destination folder on the HD it works.
    Any ideas ? I have Read/Write permissions on the source, the target drive is a 750Gb WD My Book formatted as FAT under OSX. I even ran Repair Permissions on the iMac drive

    If that works, then my guess is that the iTunes folder and its sub-folders probably have some sort of a permissions limitation placed on them, probably an Access Control List. Try doing a "list really long with every option known to man" on the iTunes folder and various sub-folders. Start with the iTunes folder itself:
    ls -alO@e ~/Music/iTunes
    Hit return and let's see what it says. If your iTunes folder is in the default location inside your home Music folder you can just copy and paste the command. Since you have managed to copy the stuff using Rsyncx you may not want to bother, as tracking this stuff down can be tedious.
    Francine
    Francine
    Schwieder

  • How do I copy iTunes folder which is on my external hard drive to my iTunes folder on my mini mac?

    I am new to Apple computers.  I have just downloaded an iTunes file from my pc onto an external hard drive and I want to know how I copy this file into my iTunes folder on my imac.

    Connect the external hard drive to your iMac.
    Open iTunes, go to the File menu, then select the item "Import into Library" and select your song in the file chooser that will appear. Press the ok button.

  • Copy a folder with Mac Aliases from Terminal

    there is any way to use "cp" command or other ones to copy from Terminal a folder that contains Mac Aliases into it?
    t.i.a

    Try using the ditto command to perform the copy as you would for a folder which doesn't contain aliases.
    (33273)

  • Guys give me a hint in how can i copy file/folder from mac to usb ?

    I´m trying to transfer some files from my mcbook Pro retina display to external disc(usb) and i´m not able to. Anybody can help me in this case?

    kytavares wrote:
    I´m trying to transfer some files from my mcbook Pro retina display to external disc(usb) and i´m not able to. Anybody can help me in this case?
    Is "transfer" nondestructive (copy) or destructive (move/delete) from your rMBP to the external USB.
    Are you using the Finder, or Terminal commands for this process?
    Is the external USB device formatted as either FAT or HFS+?
    If you receive error messages, can you share them here?

  • "Unknown Error" when trying to move a folder from local MAC drive to External HDD

    Help?
    Thanks`

    Hi,
    Are you trying to move the folder to the root level of the target external drive. If so try first making a folder in external drive and then retry moving to that new folder. A similar problem was reported in this thread http://forums.adobe.com/message/2950191#2950191 on windows where you could not export to the root level of a disk. I recall having a similar problem on my Mac and I believe that it was the same.
    -louie

  • Entire Folder of Podcasts Vanishes from External HDD

    All:
    Recently I lost an entire folder on an external disk drive. Any ideas about what I should do to test or check the drive? I could not find the folder in my trash, etc. It wasn't moved. I had just synced podcasts a day or so before today.

    I don't think the loss of files and changes is something happening 'regularly' and it sounds like, based on symptoms only, that it would more likely point to a bad disk sector or something like a corrupt directory.
    As to recovery, the demo of Data Rescue II is the first thought. But I would not use the drive(s) until I booted from another ("emergency") boot drive first and checked things out. I would restore to another drive even, if that is possible, and of course recover to another drive. And backup again before you start.
    Don't rely on just one backup drive or method. A couple backup sets, some redundancy. Cloning and TimeMachine. I was using two TimeMachine sets, in case something happened to one of them.
    If you don't use your drives, less likely to overwrite or use the portion of the drives those files might have resided on.
    I can't find the article on MacFixit, but I saw something about 10.5.4 and having iTunes on a different volume. There was one that warned about not making changes to the folders that iPhoto manages and making manual changes; I assume something to do with the originals and modified changed folders or in the iPhoto Library package.
    Sounds like you would have run Disk Warrior from one of your FW drives or something before updating to 10.5.4, along with a clone of your system. Also, consider putting backups on sparse disk image(s). One for home account even.
    Adobe posted updates to CS3 InDesign shortly after 10.5.4 was out.
    I've got half a dozen OWC Mercury type drive cases. One thing I noticed after 10.5.4 is that some that I had made backup clones now had the "Ignore Ownership" flag set to on - something that I always check and which would prevent a proper backup or restore and wouldn't allow repair permissions. So in some way, 10.5.4 did do "something" to those FW drives, but not sure how or why the ownership would be changed.

  • Moving or copying files from my Mac to my external NTFS drive.

    I use Boot-camp on my MacBook and use it as both a PC and a MAC. Because of space issues I need to use an external drive for storage and because a lot of my files are over 4g I can only use NTFS as a formatting option.
    My problem is I can't copy or move anything from my Mac to the drive, which is really annoying. With Itunes for instance I read all my music from the drive (which works fine) but I can't download anything using Itunes now because it won't write to the drive.
    Surely this is only a permission thing with Mac that be altered - Can anyone help?

    Hi and welcome to Discussions,
    it is not a permission issue you experience.
    FAT32 is the only file system, that both OSX and Windows can read and write to without additional help.
    NTFS is a modern file system for Windows, but OSX can only read from it.
    For write access from OSX you can use either NTFS-3G http://www.ntfs-3g.org/ or buy Paragons NTFS for Mac http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/
    OSX uses Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as file system, which Windows can't see nor use without the help of MacDrive http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/
    Since FAT32 is no option for you, because of the implemented singel-file size limitation of 4GB, I personally would propose NTFS in combination with NTFS-3G or Paragon.
    Hope it helps
    Stefan

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