Q: I can't put anything on my backup drive! (even though there's still room)
I have been trying to backup my pictures, but I don't want to use time machine so I can access it on Windows computers. Whenever I try to put something in the drive, a block sign comes up and doesn't let me drop it in the drive. I am usually able to set it in the drive. I am using a Seagate Backup Drive slim 3.0.
iMac, OS X El Capitan (10.11.4), null
Posted on May 2, 2016 8:32 PM
The volume is formatted for Windows, as NTFS. The format is readable, but not natively writable in OS X. To write to the volume, you must either reformat it (erasing all the contents) or install third-party software to enable write access to NTFS. The best cross-platform format is ExFAT.
If you had already installed software to make NTFS volumes writable, the software must be updated or replaced for compatibility with the current version of OS X.
If you don't need the volume to be readable in Windows, you should back it up by copying the files to another drive, erase it in Disk Utility with the option to format for Mac only, and then restore the data from the backup.
Posted on May 4, 2016 8:02 PM