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DancingSponge · Nov 29, 2005, 12:00 PM

I just attached my old 40 gig and 80gig ext hards drive to the USB ports and they popped up with icons on the desktop.

However, when I go to try and create a new folder on the drive it says it's read only. How do I go making it give me full access.

I had full access when it was attached to my old Windows PC.

I have no problems creating a folder on the 80 gig drive that I attached, just this 40 gig one.

mduell · Nov 29, 2005, 12:03 PM

The drive is probably formatted as an NTFS partition. Windows can read/write to NTFS partitions, but OSX can only read from them.

Copy your data off the drive, reformat it with Disk Utility as FAT32, and then you'll be able to read/write from Windows and OSX.

DancingSponge · Nov 29, 2005, 12:15 PM

Ah cool, ok. Great idea... thank goodness it's only the 40gig drive and not a 200 gigs that I have to copy over.

How do I check to see whether it was formated as NTFS or FAT32? When I check the drive in Disk Utility, all is says is "Write Status: Read/Write" and clicking the info button tells me under "Writeable: Yes".