External driver problem on a machintosh?

Question

Hi there, I feel like I've been a mac/windows compatibility victim for the 1000th time.

I borrowed my friends western digital wd1200 external hard drive. The first time I plugged the drive in, the icon showed up on the desktop however the drive was read only. What I wanted to do is I wanted to move files in to the drive.

The second time I plugged it in, there was nothing on the desktop. My computer is now not being able to detect to drive.

So how would I make the drive read & write? My friend runs xp on his computer.

Please help me out, I'll really appreciate it.

thanks

Answer 1

Sounds like a NTFS problem. Re-format it using FAT-32. In Disk Utiliy (Applications > Utilities) erase the disk and select MS-DOS as the format type. You can then use the hard drive on both platforms.

Answer 2

if his file system is set up as an NTFS with some very obscure permissions then the MAC won't be able to write to it, but it sould be able to read it always. Check out apple's support sites, and reboot your Mac, even though its not needed as often as windows they still need to be rebooted once in a while :)

Answer 3

Re plug it proper ly and see that ur system detects the drive.If it detects u have to change the files into archive