Deleting files from WD Elements portable hard drive

Hi all, any tips will be much appriciated, when i pluuged my portable hard drive into a mac laptop, i was unable to delete my files- photos and video files.

it said it could not allow this?

have i set up a lock without realising?

i used the cmd - backspace (delete short cut for Macs) and nothing happened.

so the files i wanted to delelte are still there?!

Hi there, when the drive is locked you don’t even see it so that’s not it. It sounds more like a permission issue or data corruption, I’d format the whole drive to clean it if I were you and then i’d run a diagnostic of the drive to test it. Then I would replace it if it happens again…

This drive comes formatted for Windows and will be read only on Mac unless you reformatted it. If you wish to use on Mac and Windows download NTFS-3G http://mac-free.com/download/NTFS-3G.html 

Joe

If you can, test the drive on a Windows based computer, if it works there then the drive is working fine and this is an issue due to the factory NTFS format on the drives, to use it in Mac you need to partition the drive or use a third party NTFS reader for Mac that you can find using a search engine online.