External Hard drive problems

M

marvelous1_555

Registered
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
 
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.
 
Do the files have extensions on them?
What happens when you try to open, nothing, or do you get any message?
 
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
 
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?
 
I found and ran disk utility.

The HD is FAT32. The number of files is considered 0 and folders is 0. It is reading that roughly 20 gigs are being used. It says permissions are not enabled and can not turn permissions off. I is not journaled, doesn't support it, and is not bootable. Not sure where to go from here.
 
Bought an EHD 80 gig HD w/ case on ebay. Loaded 20 gigs worth of songs, videos, documents, and picture files on it with windows XP via usb2.0. Saved fine, all files will open on windows. Problem: my MAC reads the HD, but every time I go to open a file, the mouse goes to "busy" and the computer is somewhat frozen. I ran disk utility and found that the HD does not have permissions enabled or can turn them on or off (Whatever this means if it can help troubleshoot). It reads the HD is 20/74 gigs used, but the disk utility doesnt display the number of files or folders, although I can view the files/folders w. Finder, but cannot open or transfer them like mentioned before. Also, the EHD is FAT32. Any comments, help or suggestions would be appreciated.

marvelous1_555@hotmail.com
 
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