External hard drive is read only on a MAC laptop

[SE14man]

Hi people



I have a MAC laptop which i connect an external hard drive to. It is NTFS. In folders on there are .RAR files all in parts. so xxx.part1 xxx.part2 etc etc.

When i go to extract the files into the same folder they're already in, It says the hard drive is read only and i do not have rights.

How can i extract them to my external hard drive without having to reformat it?

I would like to make it so i get full rights over the hard drive which allow me to write data to it.

Is this possible for MAC without the need of formatting it?

Thanks

[smrpix]

Macs don't write to NTFS. This is designed behavior.

there are software workarounds -- here's one of the better ones.

http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/

[jagabo]

Nevermind.

[SE14man]

thanks very much. Ill give it a go. I knew there would be something to do it! Always a way around these things arent there? Thanks again

[Cornucopia]

Another way around: simply extract to a different hard drive!

Scott

[jman98]

There are also free NTFS programs for Mac, but I used one years ago and was very unimpressed with it. It did not work consistently in my opinion. If you want to save money you can look into it, but it would be easier to buy the Paragon solution smrpix linked to.

Note that Windows has the same problem with the HFS file system that Mac uses. Basically neither company will cross-license their file system technology to the other, but they're willing to let 3rd parties write commercial software that can deal with it.

[jagabo]

Another way around: simply extract to a different hard drive!

That's basically what I wrote earlier. But I retracted the suggestion because he specified he wanted the resulting file on the same disk.