hey guys, i just bought a mac mini and everything seems to be running great. however, i plugged in a 2TB drive i used on my Windows 7 laptop and whenever i try to delete or add a file i get an error saying the drive is 'read only'. i've plugged in a USB thumb drive and this works fine. is there anything i can do?
thanks
Use disk utility and format it as GUID Partition Table, Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
Currently it's formatted NTFS for Windows which OSx treats as read-only.
Captfred
ok, thanks, but if i format it then i'd lose all the data? is it possible to format the drive in a certain format that's accessible to windows and macs?
thanks
FAT32 is the only partition format that's natively supported for both read and writes on both platforms, so you could use that. There are inherent limtiations in FAT32, though, so you might need to consider whether that's your best option.
There are third-party options for both platforms that enable read/write support of other formats. For example, Paragon sell software that lets Macs read/write NTFS partitions, as well as software that lets Windows read HFS+ partitions.
ok thanks.
what other options are there for me to be able to read/write from both a Mac and Windows? i want the Mac to be my main machine, but i don't see how this will be possible if i can only read from the drive. it seems like FAT32 only supports 4GB files... are there any other file systems that are cross-compatible?
what else can i do to be able to write to the drive from a Mac? i guess i could install parallels and run XP? what else can i do? i don't want to be switching machines just to be able to write to the drive.
If your Mac is your main machine then the most sensible solution is to format it for your Mac first. Then use one of the options I pointed to for getting Windows to read/write Mac-formatted volumes.
If that doesn'twork for you for some reason, then FAT32 really is the best bet, as long as you don't need individual files > 4GB
thanks. i just got the Mac setup for the first time so i'm just getting used to it. i'm not sure if it'll be my main machine or not.
what about exfat? i've never used exfat before.
would i encounter any problems if i ran exfat?
If you're using Mac OS X 10.7 and Windows 7 then ExFAT might be viable.. it's a good compromise between the ancient FAT and the restrictive NTFS formats.
It is supported by both operating systems. You may have issues if you want to connect this disk to systems runnning earlier OS versions (on either platform). You'll need to decide if that's a factor for you or not.
Do you use files larger than 4G?
ok, thanks a lot camelot. i haven't tried out ExFat, is there any apple documentation on it? i've always just used NTFS. only using Win7 and Lion isn't a problem for me.
is there another way for me to write to NTFS drives in Lion? if the external NTFS drive is connected to a laptop and turned on, could i login to the laptop on Lion and then write to it?
what if the external drive is connected to FreeNAS? i'm thinking of trying it out.
thanks.
yes i do use files larger than 4GB.
ThunderCon wrote:
yes i do use files larger than 4GB.
Format as exFat
so exFAT is just as reliable as NTFS? what are the down sides?
ThunderCon wrote:
so exFAT is just as reliable as NTFS? what are the down sides?
Not too bad, older XP machines may not be able to read them but there is a download to fix that from Microsoft (somewhere) Vista & 7 will read them.
External 2TB drive is 'read only' in Lion?
