Mac Portable Hard Drive Help?

h8thecause

I recently bought a SimpleTech portable hard drive. Its a 160gb if that matters. I am working on trying to backup my music by dragging and dropping it on there, but when I plug it in and try to drag, it does not allow me. When I view the info for the portable hard drive, the sharing and permissions says: "I can only read". How would I fix this?

Answer
Check whether the hard disk has "Write Lock". If it is so make sure it is not write locked.

Make sure that the Hard Drive is not formatted as NTFS. Mac does not support writing data to a NTFS volume. Just right click the mounted volume in Finder and select "Get Info". In the Info window check for the "Format:". In case the format is NTFS, it shows "Windows NT Filesystem". [ http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/attachments/maccar/40138d1172094097-using-external-hd-between-mac-pc-picture-1.png ].
If it is so, your Mac will not allow you to write data to that volume.

There are 2 solutions :
1. Make Mac write data to NTFS volume : Install 3rd party NTFS support for Mac. Softwares like "Paragon NTFS" [ http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/ ] allows you to write data to NTFS volume.
2. Reformat the hard disk to Mac Compatible format : This will require you to erase the entire data present in the disk. You can use Disk Utility to reformat the hard disk. If you are not sharing it with Windows PC, you can format it with format as "HFS+" (referred as "Mac OS Extended" in disk utility). In case you intend to share it with Windows "Fat32" will be the format I would recommend. Remember Fat32 does not support files larger than 4GB.

I would recommend the second solution.

External Hard Drive - easy to use, mac compatible, not too pricey?

Northerly

I'm looking for an external hard drive for my 13" White Macbook(bought January 2008) that's maybe around $100 dollars or less, and is relatively easy to use.

I'd put mainly music, videos, photos, and art files/psds that I want to keep, but don't use very often. I don't think I need that much memory(maybe 100-200 GB? Depends on pricing), but I'd like to see a few options with my specifications.

Thank you!
I meant a specific product that I can try - not whether external HDs in general are like what I mentioned.

Answer
1) all hard drives work with a mac. you just need to format it when you get it. (very easy to do)

2) here are a bunch of options for you. there are 320GB hard drives that get there power through the USB port they plug into which are great options as they are really portable. you can also get a 500GB but it needs to be plugged into an outlet. i would personally recommend the 320GB. seagate and western digital are my two favorite brands.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=Property&Subcategory=414&Description=&Type=&N=2010150414+1035907839&srchInDesc=&MinPrice=&MaxPrice=100

EDIT:

I gave you a bunch of products that would work for you and meet your requirements. Of the ones I gave you, I would recommend this one the most.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136227

or if you have a silver mac, you might like this one. same price. the other difference between this and the other is the color of the case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148341

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