Copying movies to an external hard drive.

[goul]

Hey guys.I recently bought my first imac. I seem to have an issue about copying movies from my imac to an external hard drive.I try to ''drag and drop'' but nothing is happening.I also tried to copy the movies and then paste them to the hard drive but no luck either. Any pointers or tips?????
Thanks in advance

 

[r.j.s]

What is the drive formatted as?

 

[spinnerlys]

The HDD is likely formatted in NTFS, which Mac OS X can't write to natively.

FAT32

• Read/Write FAT32 from both native Windows and native Mac OS X.
• No individual file larger than 4GB.

NTFS

• Read/Write NTFS from native Windows.
• Read only NTFS from native Mac OS X
• To Read/Write NTFS from Leopard: Install MacFUSE and NTFS-3G. You can install both with NTFS-3G for Mac OS X.
• To Read/Write NTFS from Snow Leopard: Guide: Enable native NTFS Read/Write in Snow Leopard
• (Be aware that some are of the opinion that enabling native NTFS in SL is unstable/unreliable, and favor the MacFuse/NTFS-3G method for Snow Leopard)

HFS

• Read/Write HFS from native Mac OS X
• To Read/Write HFS from Windows, Install MacDrive
• To Read HFS (but not Write) from Windows, Install HFSExplorer

To find out, select the HDD and select GET INFO from the right-click menu.

Also have a look at the following links to learn more about Mac OS X:

Mac OS X Basics, Malware, Software and other useful links

Helpful Information for Any Mac User by GGJstudios​

 

[goul]

you mean the external hard drive,correct?

 

[spinnerlys]

you mean the external hard drive,correct?

Yes, as the Mac HDD is formatted with the right file system, called Mac OS Extended or HFS+.

 

[goul]

Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

 

[spinnerlys]

Now check the Sharing & Permissions tab of the GET INFO window and see, if your user account is included or has sufficient rights.

 

[goul]

My external hard drive to which i want to transfer the movies from my imac is formatted:Windows NT File System (NTFS).
Below at sharing and Permissions says:''you can only read''

 

[NeoMacPhile]

Are you opening the hard drive in a different finder window? I had this same issue with my network hard drive because I was trying to do it from the same finder window like I did with my PC. Finally realized that I needed to open a second finder window. Then you can drag it into the open HD folder in the second window.

Make sense?

 

[Darth.Titan]

My external hard drive to which i want to transfer the movies from my imac is formatted:Windows NT File System (NTFS).
Below at sharing and Permissions says:''you can only read''

Then the external drive needs to be reformatted. OS X cannot write to NTFS drives natively.

 

[spinnerlys]

Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

This is the internal HDD I suppose then?​

My external hard drive to which i want to transfer the movies from my imac is formatted:Windows NT File System (NTFS).
Below at sharing and Permissions says:''you can only read''

I quote part of what I quoted before:

FAT32

NTFS

• Read/Write NTFS from native Windows.
• Read only NTFS from native Mac OS X
• To Read/Write NTFS from Leopard: Install MacFUSE and NTFS-3G. You can install both with NTFS-3G for Mac OS X.
• To Read/Write NTFS from Snow Leopard: Guide: Enable native NTFS Read/Write in Snow Leopard
• (Be aware that some are of the opinion that enabling native NTFS in SL is unstable/unreliable, and favor the MacFuse/NTFS-3G method for Snow Leopard)

As you can read, you can leave the HDD formatted the way it is, as it most likely contains data already you don't want to lose.
If you ONLY want to use the HDD with Macs, you should consider reformatting the HDD to HFS+ (Mac OS Extended), but know, that a reformat will delete the data already on it. You can remedy that by copying the data to your Mac first, formatting the HDD and then copying the data back.​