Mac Help Please - USB Storage
Discussion
Evening all.
I'm not au fait with macs, hence thread so hopefully one of you helpful lot can educate me.
I have a Macbook Pro that i aquired and i'm planning on using for some photo / video messing around. I also have a 1TB HP external USB drive that has a load of files and stuff on it from when i used it ages ago.
I'll keep the photos on the drive and want to delete the rest. Ideally i'd like to format the drive on the Mac (does that even make any difference?)
I can't delete anything using finder or terminal, everything says it's a read only drive. How do i make it read write?
These files were created on a windows machine under a specific windows user, but no idea where the group "staff" came from
I'm not au fait with macs, hence thread so hopefully one of you helpful lot can educate me.
I have a Macbook Pro that i aquired and i'm planning on using for some photo / video messing around. I also have a 1TB HP external USB drive that has a load of files and stuff on it from when i used it ages ago.
I'll keep the photos on the drive and want to delete the rest. Ideally i'd like to format the drive on the Mac (does that even make any difference?)
I can't delete anything using finder or terminal, everything says it's a read only drive. How do i make it read write?
These files were created on a windows machine under a specific windows user, but no idea where the group "staff" came from
Davids-MBP:HP Portable Drive username$ ls -la
total 1037592
drwxr-xr-x@ 1 username staff 4096 4 Jan 2018 $RECYCLE.BIN
drwxr-xr-x 1 username staff 8192 4 Jan 2018 .
drwxr-xr-x@ 4 root wheel 128 30 Aug 15:30 ..
drwxr-xr-x 1 username staff 4096 21 Feb 2011 Documentation
drwxr-xr-x 1 username staff 0 5 Apr 2016 temp
Davids-MBP:HP Portable Drive username$
It'll likely be because it's formatted as NTFS.
MacOS can natively read from this, but cannot write to it.
If you want the fastest performance out of it then you'll need to reformat/partition it to a Mac format - probably MacOS Extended (Journaled) - but only AFTER you've copied what you need off).
Alternatively you can use the free FUSE for macOS software and NTFS-3G to let MacOS write to the drive, but it'll be relatively slow.
The other alternative is a piece of commercial software called Paragon NTFS for Mac or Tuxera NTSF for Mac - both do a similar job, both are faster than the free one, and I believe both offer trial versions.
(FYI I use Paragon as it's the fastest overall, and more compatible)
MacOS can natively read from this, but cannot write to it.
If you want the fastest performance out of it then you'll need to reformat/partition it to a Mac format - probably MacOS Extended (Journaled) - but only AFTER you've copied what you need off).
Alternatively you can use the free FUSE for macOS software and NTFS-3G to let MacOS write to the drive, but it'll be relatively slow.
The other alternative is a piece of commercial software called Paragon NTFS for Mac or Tuxera NTSF for Mac - both do a similar job, both are faster than the free one, and I believe both offer trial versions.
(FYI I use Paragon as it's the fastest overall, and more compatible)
How old is your MacBook Pro and what OS are you running?
If it were me I would connect the external drive to the Mac then copy the photos I want to keep onto a new folder on the desktop by double-clicking on the external drive icon, locating the photos I want to keep, and drag the photo files onto the new folder icon on the desktop, it might take a few minutes or hours depending upon how many photos you are copying across so just wait until the operation has been completed.
Then I would double-check to ensure they are actually copied to the desktop!
Once that is done just format the external drive using the Mac 'Disk Utility' which is generally hidden away in the Applications > Utilities folder, am pretty sure you format it 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)' once you have done that you can drag the folder containing the photos back onto the external drive to copy them back again if you wish.
I think that Apple have tinkered with the Disk Utility app over the years so the layout may be different to the version I am using, but nevertheless 'Disk Utility' is pretty easy to use, just make sure you format the external drive and not the MacBook Pro internal drive!
Good luck
If it were me I would connect the external drive to the Mac then copy the photos I want to keep onto a new folder on the desktop by double-clicking on the external drive icon, locating the photos I want to keep, and drag the photo files onto the new folder icon on the desktop, it might take a few minutes or hours depending upon how many photos you are copying across so just wait until the operation has been completed.
Then I would double-check to ensure they are actually copied to the desktop!
Once that is done just format the external drive using the Mac 'Disk Utility' which is generally hidden away in the Applications > Utilities folder, am pretty sure you format it 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)' once you have done that you can drag the folder containing the photos back onto the external drive to copy them back again if you wish.
I think that Apple have tinkered with the Disk Utility app over the years so the layout may be different to the version I am using, but nevertheless 'Disk Utility' is pretty easy to use, just make sure you format the external drive and not the MacBook Pro internal drive!
Good luck
Edited by rich888 on Friday 30th August 22:59
rich888 said:
How old is your MacBook Pro and what OS are you running?
If it were me I would connect the external drive to the Mac then copy the photos I want to keep onto a new folder on the desktop by double-clicking on the external drive icon, locating the photos I want to keep, and drag the photo files onto the new folder icon on the desktop, it might take a few minutes or hours depending upon how many photos you are copying across so just wait until the operation has been completed.
Then I would double-check to ensure they are actually copied to the desktop!
Once that is done just format the external drive using the Mac 'Disk Utility' which is generally hidden away in the Applications > Utilities folder, am pretty sure you format it 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)' once you have done that you can drag the folder containing the photos back onto the external drive to copy them back again if you wish.
I think that Apple have tinkered with the Disk Utility app over the years so the layout may be different to the version I am using, but nevertheless 'Disk Utility' is pretty easy to use, just make sure you format the external drive and not the MacBook Pro internal drive!
Good luck
Thanks rich. It’s a late 2012 and I’ve just upgraded to Mojave. I’ll have a look.If it were me I would connect the external drive to the Mac then copy the photos I want to keep onto a new folder on the desktop by double-clicking on the external drive icon, locating the photos I want to keep, and drag the photo files onto the new folder icon on the desktop, it might take a few minutes or hours depending upon how many photos you are copying across so just wait until the operation has been completed.
Then I would double-check to ensure they are actually copied to the desktop!
Once that is done just format the external drive using the Mac 'Disk Utility' which is generally hidden away in the Applications > Utilities folder, am pretty sure you format it 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)' once you have done that you can drag the folder containing the photos back onto the external drive to copy them back again if you wish.
I think that Apple have tinkered with the Disk Utility app over the years so the layout may be different to the version I am using, but nevertheless 'Disk Utility' is pretty easy to use, just make sure you format the external drive and not the MacBook Pro internal drive!
Good luck
Edited by rich888 on Friday 30th August 22:59
Thanks all.
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