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    external hd issue

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by ianG, Jun 23, 2010.

  1. ianG

    ianG Notebook Enthusiast

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    sorry if this shouldn't go here..

    I just bought a western digital my passport essential hd to go between my macbook pro and my ps3. I plug the hd into my mbp and upon trying to install it, I get an error message telling me the drive is either locked (it isn't) or unwritable-> wrong format.


    I checked and saw the drive is formatted windows ntfs and is 'read only'. I'm wondering wht format I should choose (being on osx tiger & ps3)?

    thanks
     
    ianG, Jun 23, 2010
    #1
  2. TANWare

    TANWare Just This Side of Senile, I think. Super Moderator

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    Well the Read Only makes the drive unwritable. I though am not familiar with what format a PS3 can use..........
     
    TANWare, Jun 23, 2010
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  3. ViciousXUSMC

    ViciousXUSMC Master Viking NBR Reviewer

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    Im not a mac expert but in my experience it does not use the same drive format as windows drives, you need to format it to Mac or install the compatibility drivers so it can work with windows formatting.

    I actually had to do the reverse because there was a great sale on an external hard drive a while back that was the "mac" edition. and out of the box it would not work with windows so I had to format the drive to NTFS.

    OSX can "read" NTFS but not write.

    In your situation formatting it for Mac is not going to work because it wont work with the PS3, so you have to find one of those software that let mac work on NTFS, and I think they cost money.

    Mac is not a very compatible device to say the least, windows machines leave you with more compatibility with both software & hardware. So you can boot and use windows on the MBP if you like with bootcamp.
     
    ViciousXUSMC, Jun 24, 2010
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  4. Kyle

    Kyle JVC SZ2000 Dual-Driver Headphones

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    Burn a Linux Mint or Ubuntu CD.
    Boot from the linux CD.
    Connect the external HDD.
    Mount the laptop's internal HDD.
    Tranfer data (linux can write data to NTFS).
    Check in the linux forum for more details :)
     
    Kyle, Jun 25, 2010
    #4