Unable to paste to external hard drive

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morph1977 Author

Level 1

11 points

Unable to paste to external hard drive

I am currently trying to copy some mp4 files from my Mac to a directly attached Maxtor hard drive. If I try to paste the items, I don't get a 'paste item' option. However, if I were to try and paste the files to my desktop for example, I do! I have gone to disk utility and the 'verify disk permissions' option is greyed out on the Maxtor drive. I have tried rebooting, but the problem still occurs. Any ideas please?

MacBook Pro, iOS 4

Posted on Jun 30, 2010 1:07 PM

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Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

Jun 30, 2010 1:44 PM in response to morph1977

Select the drive's Desktop icon. Press COMMAND-I to open the Get Info window. At the bottom is the Ownership and Sharing panel. What is listed for this drive and is the "Ignore permissions ... " box checked or unchecked?

Also when you try to copy to this drive what error message do you receive?

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Answer 2

Fortuny

Level 7

21,461 points

Jun 30, 2010 9:09 PM in response to morph1977

Hi,

and while you are at it checking the Information Pane following Kappys advice, have a look at the file system used on that external HD.

Chances are that it is using the NT-file system (NTFS) which is a Windows file system and OSX can not write to it without additional help from something like NTFS-3G http://macntfs-3g.blogspot.com/

Regards

Stefan

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