samsung portable harddrive with ibook G4
hello all,
i recently purchased a portable external harddrive for use with my ibook G4 system. the harddrive is the type that does not require an external power supply as it receives power from a "Y" usb cable that connects to two usb ports. while the hard drive works perfectly fine on my roommate's new hp laptop, it doesn't seem to work on my mac. When I try to transfer a file to the drive an error occurs which reads "The item could not be moved because 'new volume' cannot be modified."
I've heard of some of these portable harddrives having trouble because the usb ports on some older machines do not provide enough power. I'm also suspicious that something else might be going on with the disk. Under the general info for the disk the format reads "Windows NT File System," and the owndership and permissions tab it says "You can only read." Was this disk formatted for a windows system and is that preventing me from writing to it or is something else going on here?
Any ideas guys? thanks much for your help!
i recently purchased a portable external harddrive for use with my ibook G4 system. the harddrive is the type that does not require an external power supply as it receives power from a "Y" usb cable that connects to two usb ports. while the hard drive works perfectly fine on my roommate's new hp laptop, it doesn't seem to work on my mac. When I try to transfer a file to the drive an error occurs which reads "The item could not be moved because 'new volume' cannot be modified."
I've heard of some of these portable harddrives having trouble because the usb ports on some older machines do not provide enough power. I'm also suspicious that something else might be going on with the disk. Under the general info for the disk the format reads "Windows NT File System," and the owndership and permissions tab it says "You can only read." Was this disk formatted for a windows system and is that preventing me from writing to it or is something else going on here?
Any ideas guys? thanks much for your help!
Comments
The disk is formatted in NTFS, which is the default system for Windows XP. Macs can only read NTFS, not write to it (though this may change with Leopard, I am not sure), so the drive must be reformatted. Go to /Applications/Utilities and run the disk utility. If you plan on useing it only for your iBook or another Mac), use HFS+. If you want the drive to be read by Mac and Windows, use FAT32 formatting, as PCs cannot recognize HFS+ without MacDrive.
I would just format it to FAT32, because you might need to transfer files between two computers. However, keep in mind that FAT32 requires all files to be UNDER 4 GB, so if you are going store huge files, use HFS+.
just a quick question though. i've gone to format the drive, but my options for a new format are
mac OS extended (journaled)
mac OS extended
MS-DOS file system
UNIX file system
are these just different names for FAT32 and so on?
i'd like to have it formated as FAT32 so that PCs will also be able to read and write to it, but i'm not sure which one this is.
thanks a lot, man. this really helps me out!
just a quick question though. i've gone to format the drive, but my options for a new format are
mac OS extended (journaled)
mac OS extended
MS-DOS file system
UNIX file system
are these just different names for FAT32 and so on?
i'd like to have it formated as FAT32 so that PCs will also be able to read and write to it, but i'm not sure which one this is.
Sorry, Ms-dos file system is FAT 32, and mac os extended is HFS+. Use the journaled option