can't make a new folder on external drive

Maybe the disk is not writable at all. Open Disk Utiltity and select the disk in the left pane. On the bottom you will find some details about the disk. Check if the format is "MAC OS Extended" or FAT.

Just try dragging the folder from your Internal HD to the External HD.

Pascal janssen wrote:

I want to copie a folder from my harddisk to an external disk.

I can see the external disk in Finder, but when i click the menu to add a new folder it isn't highlighted, so i can't choose that option.

i checked my account but i'am the only user.

What could be the problem?

Was this disk previously used with a Windows machine?

Pascal janssen wrote:

Hi,

Yes I used it earlier on a Windows computer.

After buying my fisrt Mac mini I phoned with Apple and they helped me to connect this external harddrive and an other one. One was set to function as a time machine and the other one I could use to back-up or whatever.

I'm am sure that everything was working correctly.

Now I can't cpoy things anymore. The only thing that has changed is that I can't phone Apple anymore (> 3mnths) and I upgraded to Lion.

Could ths be the problem?

In diskutility I can see that the structure is NTFS and the owner is not applied. Yhe only thing I can click on is "check disk" but I get a message that this ia a non valid request. There are no further options.

I bought 2 new harddrives from Samsung and the only thing I want to do is put my photo's and videos from that old disk to yhe new one.

I bought these new harddrives because the one that was set to Time Machine isn't working anymore. When I put it on it starts clicking, so I think its broken. If this would also happens to the other one I lost my complete photo archive nad video!!!

To prevent this I bought two new disks, but how can I get my stuff on to it?????

ps; I tried to log in as rootuser but this gives me no more options in diskutility!!

kr,

pascal

Mac OSX does not write to NTFS disks, you'll need to reformat the drive to either Fat32 or HFS

You would need to copy your photo stuff to either the Mac or a PC. (Mac won't write to NTFS, but it should let you copy from it).

You then use Disk Utility to repartition the disc as GUID and Mac OS extended file system, or if you still need to use on PC as well, leave the partition alone and just format as FAT32 file system. (In the latter case, it may be better to do the reformat from the PC).

Either way will erase the disc, so your photos will need to be moved first.

I had the same problem today, wanting to back-up my mac software on a external hard drive which is used mainly with pc's. I managed to find a workaround by using parallels and Windows 7. I shared the folders I needed and I was able to create folders and copy on my external hdd with NTFS on it. Hope that helps. Oh, and I did the same with wma music files. I used windows media player in windows and I've exported the files as mp3's. And after that, I just copied them in my mac music folder.

Don't believe you need to reformat the disc. I found some software that allowed me to create new folders on an external NTFS hard drive. I'm here because I can't remeber what it was, but when I figure it out, I'll post here.

JulianQ wrote:

Don't believe you need to reformat the disc. I found some software that allowed me to create new folders on an external NTFS hard drive. I'm here because I can't remeber what it was, but when I figure it out, I'll post here.

NTFS-3G

Tuxera

Paragon NTFS

There are many, not all work well. Reformatting correctly always works and is fully supported.

Is it in fact NTFS or FAT32?

In Disk Utility, highlight the Partition under the drive at left, click on the blue Info icon, look for File System.

Worked for me Thank Dude

http://www.tuxera.com/products/tuxera-ntfs-for-mac/download/

It's probably formatted for Windows so you can only read from it, not write.

And we already did this once, what's happened now?