Modifying External Hard Drives

Hi All,
Im a new Mac user and have so far had a smooth transition from Windows. However i have ran into a problem and im not sure how to fix it.
Essentially, i cannot modify any sort of external hard drive on my mac. I have two external drives which i used with my old laptop to store extra data on, but when i connect them to my new MacBook, i can not delete any files on them or even copy files onto them (it says that the drives "cannot be modified").
I have tried to "unlock" the external drives by clicking on info and then going to "sharing & permission" however i am unable to change the settings. It says that i can only read the drive.
Any suggestions on ways to fix this problem would be GREATLY appreciated, as i NEED to be able to use my external drives ASAP. I have done hours of research, but i could not find anything...
Thanks in advanced.
Ben

I'm pretty sure brainslice is correct and your hard drives are in NTFS format which
is read only on Macs. I wanted to add that there are a copule of apps out there which supposedly make it possible to write to NTFS drives.
One is a Macfuse from google
http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/
Another is NTFS for Mac (this one is not free though).
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/
I haven't tested either of them as I don't use windows but you can give them a try.

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