External Hard drive problems

[marvelous1_555]

I have en external seagate 80 gig HD. i switched to MAC for school and its been no problem. i had a bunch of media files on my pc (windows xp) and put them on my e-harddrive. i plug it into my mac, and it reads the harddrive, but wont let me open the files. im new w/ macs so maybe this isnt even supposed to be able to work....any suggestions?


bob
marvelous1_555@hotmail.com

[JohnDProctor]

One obvious question is to check if the files are locked. Select one of the files and do a cmd i. Look to see if the locked tick box is checked. You may need to be logged in as an administrator to do the unlock.

[bobw]

Do the files have extensions on them?
What happens when you try to open, nothing, or do you get any message?

[ElDiabloConCaca]

What format is the external hard drive formatted as? NTFS? FAT32?

[marvelous1_555]

Hey again. I appreciate the feedback. I don't know the format of the harddrive. What happens is my powerbook reads all of the folders and you can get in the folder, but when I try to either open any of them or tranfer them to my hard disk, the system sort of freezes up. The mouse turns to busy and nothing happens. I've let it sit for 20 or 30 minutes like that and nothing happens. I mean everything works fine between my PC and the EHD though. Is there a way I can check the format? It was a HD already in a case I bought of of ebay.


Thanks in advance
Bob

[marvelous1_555]

Oh, and the files are just basic documents, pictures, mp3, mpeg and avi files.

[marvelous1_555]

any suggestions?

[Satcomer]

Yes. Do a Get Info on the hard drive itself. See if you have (or can change) permissions on the drive to see if your user account can take those files. Who does the hard drive belong too? Get it?