I have an external hard drive that is both Mac and Windows compatible and can no longer delete any files. I recently reformatted my Mac, does this have anything to do with it?

I've clicked on the 'get info' tab, but it says read only for all files.

You can't write to it because it's formatted as NTFS which OS X will read but not write to. If you want to continue using the drive with both a PC and OS X you will need to download and install NTFS-3G so you can then write to it from your Mac. You can get NTFS-3G at:
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/24481/ntfs-3g
If you want to use the drive exclusively with your Mac then move the data off it and reformat it in Disk Utility (Applications - Utilities - Disk Utilities) as Mac OS Extended (Journaled.)

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I have an external hard drive that shows up in disk utility but Verify and Restore are greyed out.

I have an external hard drive that shows up in disk utility but Verify and Restore are greyed out. I am trying to determine what is wrong with the drive.
I need the data on the drive and it won't show up in Disk Warrior. I have tried different Mac's and different USB cords only to find the same outcome. When selected in Disk Utility the information read as such...
Disk Description : WD Elements 1023 Media                      Total Capacity : 500.11 GB (500,105,740,288 Bytes)
Connection Bus : USB                                                               Write Status : Read/Write
Connection Type : External                                                     S.M.A.R.T. Status : Not Supported
USB Serial Number : 575837314135304D36373132        Partition Map Scheme : Unformatted
As the drive shows in Disk Utility there must be some life left in it surely. There is a possibilty that the physical connection between the USB cord and the external drive is damaged but since the drive shows up I believe it's unlikely... before I give it to the pro's is there anything else I can do to diagnose the issue?

Hello,
I have just experienced the same thing!
Although my external drive shows in Disk Utility, it does not show in Finder.
And the Verify/Repair buttons are also greyed out.
Also, although the drive is 2TB. DU shows it as having Total Capacity of only 4.14GB! (Which should be the Free Space).
I was wondering if you solved your problem, & if so, would you share your solution.
I´m afraid to Erase in case I lose all my Data on the drive.
Thanks in advance for your reply!

I have an external hard drive that was formatted by a PC and has files and directories etc. I want to format it and use it on my IMAC for backup but I can't seem to write to it nor can I delete current content. How do I initialize it for use with the MAC?

I have an external hard drive that was formatted by a PC and has files and directories copied to it etc. I want to use it on my IMAC for backup. I see it on my my IMAC . I can open files etc. But I can't seem to write to it nor can I delete current content. I don't care if I lose current content. How do I initialize it for use with the MAC?

You can't write to it because it's formatted as NTFS which OS X will read but not write to. If you want to continue using the drive with both a PC and OS X you will need to download and install NTFS-3G so you can then write to it from your Mac. You can get NTFS-3G at:
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/24481/ntfs-3g
If you want to use the drive exclusively with your Mac then move the data off it and reformat it in Disk Utility (Applications - Utilities - Disk Utilities) as Mac OS Extended (Journaled.)

I have an external hard drive that I have been using for years. All of a sudden my mac will not recognize the external as a "save as" device location. But the external does show up on my desktop and I can open it to drag and drop items. Help.

I have an external hard drive that I have been using for years. All of a sudden my mac will not recognize the external as a "save as" device location. But the external does show up on my desktop and I can open it to drag and drop items. What happened and how do I get my mac to rerecognize the device?!?!?

Hi,
Check Finder>Preferences>Sidebar, is it checked there to show external drives?

I am new to a MAC. I have an external hard drive that I used with my Windows XP computer. Can I reformat it

I am new to MAC. I have an external hard drive that I used with my former computer running Windows XP. Can I reformat it to use with my new MAC? If so, how do I do it?

Yes you can. See the following:
Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.

HT4718 I have an external hard drive that I used as Time Machine Backup. I have not used it for a while and now, when I plug it in computer says: This disc is not readable. I want to recover the backups and not erase and reformat the disc. Thank you in

I have an external hard drive that I have used as Time Machine backup, but not for a while. Now when I plug it in, computer says this disc is not readable.
I want to keep the backups on it and not erase and start over.
Thank you in advance.
Gregor

It sounds like something went wrong with the drive. Did you drop it? How long has it been sitting around unused?

I keep getting "error occurred while attempting to import file *******. The disc your are attempting to use is full." I have an external hard drive that I moved files over to, but apparently they're also still on my hard drive? HELP!

I keep getting "error occurred while attempting to import file *******. The disc your are attempting to use is full." I have an external hard drive that I moved files over to, but apparently they're also still on my hard drive? HELP!

So you have backed up the content of the computer's hard drive, too?
That usually is a great idea since it is possible to lose use of the system
if parts of it have accidentally been removed or get over-written, or the
main system files get corrupted, when the hard disk drive gets too full.
If you have not trashed the originals of your created content, that remain
after you made copies on an external hard drive or other device, then
that is what you'd have to do to reclaim the capacity still in use by them.
What are specifications of the hard disk drive? The unused capacity
verses the used, in GB? If the hard drive has less than 15 to 20%
free or unused capacity, you could run into trouble. Mine are 40-50%
unused hard drive space, so ample room is available for automatic
Virtual Memory to use that capacity as temporary swap file space.
This is helpful when the computer could use more physical RAM
memory capacity, but doesn't have it. Or if the RAM is maxxed out
and you can't add any more. Virtual Memory is part of OS X and the
system automatically can use as much as is available, but it is better
to be sure there is plenty of resources available to include chip RAM
as well as unused or free hard drive capacity for use as VM.
If for some reason your files in Trash won't go away when you empty
it, you may have to restart. Be sure you have not included any System
files in the content in the Trash, or the Mac may not start up later on.
You may have to boot the computer from the install-restore OS X DVD
and run Repair Disk from its version of Disk Utility, to be sure it's OK.
I'm guessing that by now you know enough about the vintage system
in the older hardware to figure it out, so I won't write about it now.
In any event... hopefully you can simply trash the files, but check them
carefully, & you may need to remove (copy to archive first) even more.
Good luck & happy computing!

I have an external hard driver that I used to use with my old pc, but now I have a mac and I can see all of the files on it and open them, but I can't add things to it. How do I fix this?

I use my external hard drive to store all of my music, but now I can't save anything on it with my new Mac. Is there a way that I can reformat it or something without losing everything I already have on there?

I suggest to copy all your files in your external drive to your Macbook and reformat that external drive to Mac OS Extended Journaled or exFat.
Once you've done that - then copy all the files back to your external drive.
Do not format your external drive if you haven't copied whats in your external drive. You'll lose everything.

Do I need to have an external hard drive that has a certain spindle speed, like 7200?

In the past, when I did audio or video editing, the specs on the software required a certain rotational speed if I were using an external hard drive. Most of the time it was 7200. Do I need to use a specific spindle rotational speed for Final Cut Pro, or will drive 5400 or above do fine?

That still applies today as well. Helps to also use faster connection ports like Firewire 400 or 800, USB 3.0, or Thunderbolt rather than USB 2.0.

I have an external hard drive that is partitioned three ways. I have made an install disk out of one partition. How can I use this partition, and not the whole drive with bootcamp assistant?

See title.
When the drive is plugged in, boot camp assistant says that no installer can be found, but the application doesn't list the three separate partitions like finder/disk util does.
I am using a mid-'12 retina mac running os X 10.9
Hopefully this is an easy fix.
Thanks in advance.

Hello,
I have just experienced the same thing!
Although my external drive shows in Disk Utility, it does not show in Finder.
And the Verify/Repair buttons are also greyed out.
Also, although the drive is 2TB. DU shows it as having Total Capacity of only 4.14GB! (Which should be the Free Space).
I was wondering if you solved your problem, & if so, would you share your solution.
I´m afraid to Erase in case I lose all my Data on the drive.
Thanks in advance for your reply!

I have an external hard drive that I cannot find on my macbook pro.

I cannot find my external drive on my MacBook Pro. I can find it in the Utilities disk but I don't know what to do so that I can use it. Can you please help?
Thank you

Welcome to Apple Support Communities
To access to your external disk, open a Finder window and choose it in the sidebar, under "Devices". Another way is to go to Finder menu (on the menu bar) > Preferences > General, and mark "External drives" to show it in your desktop. Then, you can read your data on your external disk and you can copy files, unless your external drive is using NTFS. In this case, you will have to use Paragon NTFS or format it

So, I have an external hard drive that was connected to my mac not able to access.

Under Disk Utility I was able to see it how ever I was unable to access it. So I made a partition thinking that might help. However I think it erased that the disk? Can I recover or undo? or remove the partition? what can I do to get the information from it?? Please help!

You have erased your drive, if this data is important stop using the drive immediately and contact a data rescue company, you may also try some of the data recovery software available, I have no recommendations for that stuff (I backup so don't have a need for recovery)

How do I use an external hard drive that has been used on a windows machine on my mac....

I have recently just bought a new mac and want to edit files that are currently saved on my external hard drive that I used on my windows machine.
Is there any way to be able to do this or will I have to transfer all files across to my mac and then re-format the external?
Thanks in advance.

Either copy files over, reformat drive from NTFS to a Mac format and copy files back, or tell your Mac how to write to NTFS drives with a third-party product. Tuxera NTFS has high ratings: http://www.tuxera.com/products/tuxera-ntfs-for-mac/

I have a external hard drive not an apple product. How do I save data from itunes to this hard drivet

I have an external hard drive that is not an apple product. How do I save my Itunes music to this external hard drive? It would clear space in Itunes.

Back up your iTunes library by copying to an external hard drive
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1751

How do I access an external hard drive that shows up in Disk Utility but will not show up in finder or on my desktop?

I have an external hard drive that just stopped showing up one day. Is there a solution to this problem that allows me to secure the data on the drive before reformatting?

I'm having the same problem bpay14, but with a CalDigit VR2 6TB RAID0 external hard drive.
One day it was showing on my desktop, the other it wasn't. And I still didn't update my Mavericks to 10.9.3 (still with the 10.9.2).
It shows up in the disk utility, and I can even Verify the disk and Repair it (but I don't wanna start repairing
something that probably doesn't need to be repaired, so I haven't clicked the Repaid button, only the Verify button) and it says its working just fine.
But it doesn't show in the Finder or the desktop for that matter.
And even if I force disconnect the cable, I get the usual "this disk was not ejected properly" notification
presumingly the disk was mounted on the desktop and I forced eject by unppluging it...
I found a way to force open the disk, through Disk Utility that's by clicking with the right mouse button
on the disk icon, and chosing OPEN "CalDigit AFRICA 6TB"... (see picture 1)
But... after that, it open a Finder window showing all my internal and external drives, but that drive's
name is in washed grey, like if it was unmounted (see picture 2).
When selected, I can see everything and work normally on the harddrive, even opening FCPROX projects or Libraries, copying from it and writing documents into it... just normal... (see picture 3)
BUT IT DOES NOT SHOW IN THE DESKTOP...
that's my problem...
I even did a Command+i for Info on the hard drive. (see picture 4)
Can anyone shed some light on this issue?
I would be eternally grateful!
Thanks in advance!!!
Cheers!

I have an external hard drive that is both Mac and Windows compatible and can no longer delete any files. I recently reformatted my Mac, does this have anything to do with it?

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