help with external enclosure

[vtprinz]

I just got the Macally 100AC external enclosure and I've put my old PC hard drive in it (with windows still on it). The problem is that I can't change the permissions so that I can write onto the drive, only read. It's not a huge problem right now as I hope to reformat the drive when I'm done backing everything up, but I'm not sure if I'll still have that problem then as well.

I assume I just use the disk utility to erase the external hard drive? What file system do I use, journaled or not? And when I reformat it will I be able to write to it?

Thanks a lot!

 

[killmoms]

I just got the Macally 100AC external enclosure and I've put my old PC hard drive in it (with windows still on it). The problem is that I can't change the permissions so that I can write onto the drive, only read. It's not a huge problem right now as I hope to reformat the drive when I'm done backing everything up, but I'm not sure if I'll still have that problem then as well.

I assume I just use the disk utility to erase the external hard drive? What file system do I use, journaled or not? And when I reformat it will I be able to write to it?

Thanks a lot!

It's because the drive is likely formatted using NTFS, which is not writable on any system other than Windows. Not a permissions issue, it's a filesystem one. Yes, if you reformat using HFS+ it will be writable. You'd only turn off journaling if you were going to use this drive for something particularly high-performance, like video editing or something. Otherwise, journaling is a good thing to have—it helps preserve filesystem integrity in the case of an improper dismount (e.g. machine getting turned off suddenly, drive getting disconnected without being unmounted, etc.).

 

[danny_w]

How is the disk formatted? If it is NTFS, that is why it is read-only. OS X can read NTFS disks but cannot write to them. When you reformat it for Mac, if you want to be able to clone the OS to it, then make it HFS+ Journaled. If you wish to also be able to read and write directly attached to a Windows PC, then format it as FAT32 (but there are file size limitation, and it cannot be used for the OS in that case). If you want both, then partition the disk and make part HFS+ and part FAT32.