OS X :: Possible To Delete Files Just From External Hard Drive?
Oct 22, 2009
I have an external hard drive that I use as my "back-up" of old jobs. I then burn my jobs to a dvd and then delete the files I burned. Is it possible to just delete the files from the external hd and not my computer?
I had just purchased a Lacie 500GB xternal drive for my G5, I also have another xternal drive hooked up which is a Western Digital. I copied everything , music video files ect... onto the Lacie drive to clean up the WD drive, now when I went to clean up the new Lacie drive the files I deleted are gone but it is not freeing up any space. I went to disk utilities and re-formatted but it wiped it clean, is there such a way to delete a few files here and there and gain the space they were taking up without going this route?
Basically I just got myself the latest MacBook as an upgrade from an old laptop. With my old laptop I had no problems what so ever when using my external hard drive. To delete any files I didn't want I would just right click and press the delete option. However, when connected to my new Mac, there is no such option when right clicking on a file. I've tried dragging the file to a recycling bin but I get a message from the finder saying this file can't be deleted. I've tried moving the file out of my hard drive which worked and then deleting it which was fine but the file remained in the external hard drive as I'd only created a copy. I can't figure out how to delete files I don't want. Deleting everything on the hard drive is out of the question.
I'm trying to clear up space on my external hard drive (Western Digital - My Passport), but it won't let me delete anything. In file, 'move to trash' is not highlighted, and when I click on get info, under 'sharing and permissions', it says 'you can only read'.
I have been using a Seagate 1TB external hard drive (Mac OS Extended Format) to archive some of my videos for the past 6 months. I have been using it with no problems whatsoever until now. Today I fired it up and tried to delete a few files from the drive and nothing happens.
I drag the files to the trash and hit "Secure Empty Trash" from the finder menu. I hear the "crinkle" sound of the trash emptying, but when I look in the trash the files are still there...it refuses to delete the files.
I copied some directories/files from my PC to a LaCie external drive. I then copied them from the drive to the iMac.
I tried to delete, e.g., drag to Trash, them from the external drive while connected to the iMac. It didn't work. I tried a mouse right click, but no delete on Menu. Is there a way to delete files on the iMac? I ended up connecting the drive to the PC, & deleting the files, but I'd like to be able to do the same from the iMac.
I've had some trouble deleting a file off my external hard drive connected to my iMac. The file shows up on the mac side but doesn't appear when I switch over to windows. I've tried to uncheck the permissions of the locked file but it will not unlock it.
When I try to send it to the trash, a dialogue appears saying that it is a locked file but do you want to delete it anyway. Nothing happens when I hit continue to delete the file. Anyone have any suggestions to get rid of this file?
I have a Maxtor One Touch III, 320 GB. I'm trying to back up my whole MAC computer (which amounts to about...a little over 100 GB...so too big for DVD's), but it won't let me delete or add anything to the harddrive. It'll let me copy things off it, but it won't let me delete or add. How do I change the settings? I have a PC I can use it with, so I can do the settings there. Or maybe there's an online backup place for free? I just need a LOT of space to back everything up for a while, since I have to redo my entire computer.
I am selling my iMac 27" and I want to deleted all of my files except for the IOS Lion. how to do this and get the hard drive back to a factory setting so that I can sell the computer and not have to worry about content being on the hard drive. I have a external hard drive backup.
I have a macbook and I am connecting an external hard drive via USB 2.0.
When I want to delete a folder it gives me "error 1407". There is nothing in the folder and it is not protected in any way. It was a folder created by me only a month or so ago. ALL of the folders on my external hard drive are like this. No files are effected with this issue.
I've been backing up my MacBook Pro on an external portable hard drive. I need to delete some but not all the files from that portable hard drive permanently. When I highlight them and click to move them to Trash I get a message telling me this cannot be done because they are Read Only files? How do I go about it. I am required by work to delete them off this hard drive. Do I have to reformat the hard drive? If so how do I go about it?
I have a couple of FW drives hooked up to my iMac and I just discovered I can't trash anything from them. Actually, ever since upgrading to Lion I've been having all sorts of permission issues, but that's another discussion. In this case I've gone to the info windows for these drives and I have only read premission and I can't seem to change it. I've done all the usual things to do so but it remains stuck on "read only." I'm regularly repairing permissions so I don't see that working, tho I haven't tried trashing anything from these drives in a while so I don't know how long it's been this way.
I know this is an elementary question, but I do not want to delete all of my pictures, music, etc after I put them on my external hard drive and come to find out that I can never get them back.
Will someone please reassure me that once they are transferred, they are still accessible if needed?
Here is the back ground information of this situation. I have a IMAC 21 inch 500GB Hard drive 4 GB RAM, which is up to date with OS X Ver 10.7.3. So my wife loves to stream her favorite USA TV shows via the Internet, considering we are stationed overseas. She pulled me away from the NBA playoffs because she kept getting this error of start up disk full delete files (or something to that effect.) So last week, I deleted about 40GB of old shows that we downloaded and various other files and pictures. Not even four days later the Hard drive is full again, and I think it is from my wife's streaming habit. I went to "About This IMAC", to find out where the memory was being used from and its 377 GB used in a "OTHER", and the rest being utilized from APPS, MUSIC, PICTURES, etc. So next I cleared the history and deleted the cache files and reset safari on both our log in profiles, then logged out and restarted the computer, which did not minimize the Hard drive memory being occupied. Where are those streaming files getting saved specifically, for maybe a manual delete?
My friend wanted some files to be transferred to his external hard drive from my Mac. As he is a Windows user, I guess his hard drive is formatted for Windows as well. As I plug in the hard disk in my Mac, I can't transfer the files. It says something like "the disk cannot be modified". So, please help me on how can I transfer this files from my Mac and if I do format it to work with the Mac, will it work for Windows later?
I have an external usb hdd attached to my mini. I was able to network with my new macbook easily, but I couldnt find any way to access the external drive. I have all my music on that external hdd, and want to be able to stream that to the new macbook.
Basically I have an iMac and a Macbook Pro (unibody) and a USB external hard drive (500GB) I want to wirelessly back up my Macbook Pro and the iMac with the hard drive connected to the iMac. A sort of time capsule concept. But i don't have an airport base station to make this process easier I only have a wanadoo livebox.
just a few minutes ago, i decided to install leopard on my mac. So i cloned my old install onto my external hard drive using carbon copy cloner. once that was done and verified that it was good, i inserted my leopard dvd and installed: erasing my os x install...now i booted up and was messing in disk utility and erased my external hard drive...i thot it was the other one i had plugged in for time machine! i just lost all my important files, including my itunes library, and everything else that i really need!!
We have a 320gb external hard drive formatted in FAT32 so both the macbook and our windows computer could use the drive. We copied 5 gigs of music to the hard drive to view on the Windows computer. The computer recognizes the drive and shows that 5 gigs are being used but I cant see any of the files.
I am trying to use my hard drive I have had for a couple years to back up some files on my computer, but the data I had stored on there already has disappeared. I previously had the hard drive connected to the Time Machine application, but have not used it in over a year when I received an error message trying to backup my computer using that application.
I know the data I already had on there is still on the hard drive because nearly half of the space on the drive is used up, but when I plug the hard drive in to my computer and open it there are no files to be found. I want to back up the current files on my computer, but I don't want to risk losing what I already had on the hard drive, so is there any way I can find and access the old files again?
I'll include my hardware information on here in case that helps to find a solution: 2006 MacBook Pro 15" Intel Core Duo Mac OS X 10.5.8 1TB Western Digital My Book: Studio Edition II Dual-drive Storage System with RAID
I have a Macbook Pro 13.3" running 10.6.4. I've had this computer for a year now and I have always wondered. Can my 500 GB Toshiba Hard Drive be used for Time Machine and for storing files at the same time?
I've heard about partitioning it, but will that delete the files on there? I dont have enough space on my hard drive to backup my external HD.
I recently bought a Macbook and I have a external USB hard drive that is formatted NTFS. I copied all of the files off of external HD and pasted them on my Macbook. I slicked the external hard drive and formatted it as FAT32 so I could read & write on both a PC and Mac if I need.
Anyways, once the external hard drive was formatted I tried moving all of the files back to the external but I keep getting and error code once I paste the files on the external drive. It says: "Sorry, the operation could not be completed because an unexpected error occurred. Error code 0"
Now I'm not sure if the files are locked or what but I need help. I want to move them back to the external drive. It actually copies a few files to the external but nowhere near what all I need. They are just some .doc files that are on there
Recently I just converted my old PC's 250gb Hard drive into an external drive. In the beginning everything worked fine. Though I could only read the files from it on my mac, I was fine with that because there was so much old music and pictures that I wanted to get off of it. There happened to be one particular picture that I couldn't find searching through the HDD with my mac, so I thought maybe I would be able to find if I looked for it through a windows system.
So I then plugged the external into my Windows laptop. After failing to find the picture on the PC, I plugged the hard drive back into my mac, but for some reason it's not showing the files. The hard drive is being found, but when i click on them in the finder no files show! The drive is not erased because the capacity and amount free is still the same. And to put the icing on the cake when I plugged the drive back into my PC a message comes up that says "The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error".
I have an IMAC and I am having problems transferring video files I download to my external hard drive. I had trouble playing the files at first because it was not readable with Quicktime. I downloaded VPN and it played with VPN. I don't want to save those files on my computer so I would like to transfer it to my external harddrive. When I try to drag it over, it won't let me drop it in. I am new to the MAC world. Is there a way to choose where it will save itself right before you download like there is on windows. I click on it and it does not prompt you, it just starts downloading.
I have recently made the plunge into mac kingdom and very pleased so far.
I am going through the pain staking task of transferring music, photos etc.. from my windows laptop to my new macbook pro.
I started off by setting up file sharing and copying files but it is taking absolutely ages.
Ideally I would like to use my 500gb mybook external hard drive but given an experience I just had when putting a memory stick in my mac straight after loading it up from my pc am I likely to lose all my current external hard drive data?
Complete ball ache if thats the case as all my films are on there and burning it all to DVD would take forever.
finder application stopped finding certain types of files on an external drive. The external drive (WD 80GB) is recognised and I have access to all files, however, when I search for specific files in the finder window it wont find pdf, txt, doc files. It does find picture files such as jpg. I have tried using the drive on my laptop (snow leopard) and macmini (leopard)
All files on my external hard drive are missing. I was connecting my laptop to my external hard drive. It was taking an unusually long time. Once it did finally connect, two external hard drive icons appeared. then everything froze. I restarted my computer, but it wouldn't restart. After three days it finally restarted but nothing is on my hard drive. Mac os version 10.4.11
I have a 250GB WD external hard drive. I formated it in MS-DOD(FAT)/ExFAT using disk utilities.I have problem copying files from MacBookPro to an external hard drive. when i try to copy it says "The Finder can’t complete the operation because some data can’t be read or written (Error code -36) " The info of the files is shown as read & write?
Info: MacBook Pro (13-inch Early 2011), Mac OS X (10.6.8)