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trying to drag files to external hard drive.

I have just installed an external hard drive on my mac air. It shows up under locations. I have tried to drag and drop files but they won't add to the hard drive. very very very frustrated with apple support. unable to find ANY help anywhere for even simple issues. Really getting close to the same incompetence as MS

Posted on Jul 12, 2021 9:12 AM

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Posted on Jul 12, 2021 12:17 PM

That's not a bad thing. When you click on the external hard drive, you'll see some details appear on the right under the drive name. The format of the drive is located there. I've included a sample from my Mac. The disk name is Macintosh HD. The file type is APFS (Encrypted).


This is my main volume, but you'll see something similar on your external drive. If your external drive says NTFS it's unlikely that a Mac will write to it out of the box. Most external drives are not formatted out of the box for Mac. If you see NTFS, and cannot copy files, you may then want to reformat. to a Mac friendly, or Mac and PC sharable format. Again, that depends on your intended use.




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Jul 12, 2021 12:17 PM in response to goldeeneyes1

That's not a bad thing. When you click on the external hard drive, you'll see some details appear on the right under the drive name. The format of the drive is located there. I've included a sample from my Mac. The disk name is Macintosh HD. The file type is APFS (Encrypted).


This is my main volume, but you'll see something similar on your external drive. If your external drive says NTFS it's unlikely that a Mac will write to it out of the box. Most external drives are not formatted out of the box for Mac. If you see NTFS, and cannot copy files, you may then want to reformat. to a Mac friendly, or Mac and PC sharable format. Again, that depends on your intended use.




Jul 12, 2021 9:25 AM in response to goldeeneyes1

Based on your summary, it may be that your external hard drive is not formatted to be writable by a Mac. Warning: formatting a drive will erase all of the current contents of that external drive. If you have files on that disk, be sure to back them up or move them to your computer before reformatting.


If you plan to use the external drive with both Mac and PC, visit https://support.apple.com/guide/disk-utility/format-a-disk-for-windows-computers-dskutl1010/mac


If this will be a Mac only drive you may find it beneficial to use the APFS format https://support.apple.com/guide/disk-utility/add-erase-or-delete-apfs-volumes-dskua9e6a110/mac


A guide to the file types available to you is at https://support.apple.com/guide/disk-utility/file-system-formats-available-in-disk-utility-dsku19ed921c/mac

Jul 12, 2021 10:21 AM in response to goldeeneyes1

Just to be sure, you may want to verify your current external drive file format. You can do that in disk utility -- you may need to expand the arrows next to the "container" in the selector to get to your hard drive name. I've run into the same issue in the past because the external drive was formatted NTFS (which a Mac can read but not write to). You can then reformat as necessary and move files. Just be sure to take anything on the drive off first.

trying to drag files to external hard drive.

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