# Copying From Imac to external harddrive

Category: Geeks r Us

## Post 1 by changedheart421 (I've now got the bronze prolific poster award! now going for the silver award!) on Friday, 25-May-2012 22:19:02

Hello
I am a new mac user. I don't understand yet a lot about it and have a question. I have almost 2 tb worth of music movies and so on. The drive is an free agent seagate something 3tb. I know it is formatted as ntfs so can someone tell me why my files from the mac can't be copied to it for storage? If I am not able to use this drive will a fat32 formatted one be better because I have an old one I can use if I need to. Thank you.

## Post 2 by rat (star trek rules!) on Saturday, 26-May-2012 0:37:00

you'll have to use the FAT32 drive, unless you buy a special add in from a third party company the mac can't write to NTFS drives, only read from them.

## Post 3 by changedheart421 (I've now got the bronze prolific poster award! now going for the silver award!) on Thursday, 31-May-2012 22:53:15

can you or anyone suggest a third party app.

## Post 4 by rat (star trek rules!) on Friday, 01-Jun-2012 19:45:17

there is one just don't remember it of the top of my head.

## Post 5 by forereel (Just posting.) on Friday, 01-Jun-2012 21:15:35

I thought Sea Gates were both Mac and PC compatible? Maybe read the manual and see?

## Post 6 by rat (star trek rules!) on Friday, 01-Jun-2012 21:48:51

it's not the type of drive that matters it's the formatting on the drive. reformat a drive, any drive, and it usually will work with the mac.

## Post 7 by forereel (Just posting.) on Friday, 01-Jun-2012 22:20:14

Doesn't a Mac have a feature like Windows where you can go to the drive and format it? Maybe research that?

## Post 8 by changedheart421 (I've now got the bronze prolific poster award! now going for the silver award!) on Saturday, 02-Jun-2012 10:32:48

Hi. I need to be able to use the drive with windows and mac. this drive is the only one that is used by all the computers in my home. We can not afford another one right now.

## Post 9 by rat (star trek rules!) on Saturday, 02-Jun-2012 16:15:20

then find a place to copy the data too for a temporary time and format that drive as fat32. that'll solve the compatibility problems

## Post 10 by rusty81 (Zone BBS is my Life) on Sunday, 03-Jun-2012 9:19:42

I recommend using paragon NTFS
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/
or if you don't want to install any software, you could format your external HDD to fat32
HTH,
Ritchie

## Post 11 by rat (star trek rules!) on Sunday, 03-Jun-2012 16:57:43

ahh, that was the program i was thinking of.

## Post 12 by WillieTheWoof (I'll have the last word, thank you!) on Monday, 04-Jun-2012 9:15:51

I'm agreeing with the reformatting to FAT32. I use flash drives between windows and mac all the time and FAT32 allows both types of files to be copyed. Windows and Mac will read that format. The only thing I do notice is that mac seems to put allot of I believe it's .trsh or something like that and these are files that windowsw will see. They can be deleted without causing any problems. A few is not a bad thing but if you do allot of copying from mac and windows you might want to periodicly delete these files. They're about 1 to 2 KB a piece and that's nothing but they can acumulate.