Why cant I copy folders from an external hard drive?

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Level 1

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Why cant I copy folders from an external hard drive?

All permisssions are set correctly, and yet I still cannot import files from my lion laptop to my older snow leopard desktop via a portable hard disk drive. I no longer need the laptop and intend to sell it, hence the need to copy. Would the situation benefit from a OS update or my imac to mountain lion?

I cannot even click on these folders on the hard drive in finder.

Answers involving sharing on a network are not applicable.

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Aug 1, 2012 5:12 AM

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Answer 1

rkaufmann87

Level 10

140,550 points

Aug 1, 2012 5:20 AM in response to lauwolves

Most external HD's come pre-formatted for MS Windows machine and use NTFS as the format. If that is the case with yours then it is operating correctly and needs to be re-formatted. OS X can read NTFS however will not write to it. If you plan to use the drive only with your Mac then using Disk Utility please reformat to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). You can find Disk Utility in Application - Utilities - Disk Utility.

If this isn't the case with yours do some basic such as Repairing Disk Permissions in Disk Utility. Restarting in Safe Mode to clear some caches and also doing both iMac SMC and PRAM reset. I would recommend doing a SMC and PRAM reset 2x each.

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