Macbook Pro will only read on external drive.....

I got a Maxtor portable external drive, 320gig model, and was able to backup my files from WinXp desktop pc that includes mp3's and mp4 videos. I'm converting to apple and just got a Macbook Pro, 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo running on Mac OS X v.10.5.4. My question is that I wanted to add some files from my macbook to my external drive but some reason can't. Either the external drive won't let me or my macbook won't.
I check the info on the external and the drive is formatted to 'windows NT files system.' Does that have anything to do with why I can't make any changes on my external? Does any one have a solution for me? Any suggestions would deeply be appreciated.

bigjohnny002,
OS X can read NTFS volumes, but it cannot write to them. There is third-party software (MacFuse) that will allow OS X to write to NTFS volume, however.
In the absence of this third-party software, you will need to re-format that external. FAT-32 volumes can be created by OS X, and both OS X and Windows can read and write to them, but there is a 4 GB size limit for files stored in this file system.
If you are not planning on transferring files back to a Windows computer, the best format will be HFS+ (Mac OS Extended). Provided there is enough space on your Macbook Pro, you can copy all the files from the external to the Macbook Pro, use Disk Utility to re-format the drive, then copy the files back.
Scott

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Macbook Pro will only read on external drive.....

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