By Bob LeVitus. You can move Mac OS X Lion files and folders around within a window to your heart’s content as long as that window is set to icon view. Just click and drag any file’s icon to its new location in the window.
You can move Mac OS X Lion files and folders around within a window to your heart’s content as long as that window is set to icon view. Just click and drag any file’s icon to its new location in the window.
You can’t move icons around in a Mac OS X Lion window that is displayed in list, column, or Cover Flow view. Well, you can move them to put them in a different folder in list, column, or Cover Flow view, but that’s not moving them around, really.
As you might expect from Apple, you have choices for how you move one file or folder into another folder. You can use these techniques to move any icon (folder, document, alias, or program icon) into folders or onto other disks.
Drag an icon onto a folder icon. Drag the icon for one folder (or file) onto the icon for another folder (or disk) and then release when the second icon is highlighted. The first folder is inside the second folder. Put another way, the first folder is a subfolder of the second folder.
This technique works regardless of whether the second folder’s window is open.
Drag an icon into an open folder’s window. Drag the icon for one folder (or file) into the open window for a second folder (or disk).
If you want to move an item from one disk to another disk, you can’t use the preceding tricks. Your item is copied, not moved. If you want to move a file or folder from one disk to another, you have to hold down the Command key when you drag an icon from one disk to another. The little Copying Files window even changes to read Moving Files.
Mac OS X do not support writing files into NTFS filesystems by default and you cannot copy files to external hard drive from mac. But Mac do support reading the NTFS drives and copying files from NTFS HDDs. Most of the Mac users don’t know this and will buy portable external hard disks to expand the storage space. If you bought one, don’t worry 3 solutions are for you.
Cannot copy files to external hard drive from mac ?
Solution 1. Format the Hard disk with ExFat file system (Windows and Mac will fully support it)
Solution 2. A Third party utility to support read and write operations on NTFS file system.
Solution 3. Using simple tweaks play on your Mac OS X.
1. Format the Hard disk with ExFat file system
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If you go for the first solution, simply backup all the data and connect your external hard disk to your MAC and follow the steps
- Connect your Portable External Hard drive and open “Disk Utility”
- Select the External Disk on the left section, and click on the “ERASE” tab and format as ExFAT file system
2. Third party software for NTFS support on Mac
Second solution is a third party utility that adds NTFS drivers for Mac. Go for “Paragon NTFS for Mac” which is a paid software. Download and install it.
If you are using Seagate external hard disk, the download free copy of “Paragon NTFS” thats comes absolutely free and only works with Seagate branded portable hard disks. Download Paragon NTFS for Seagate made Portable Hard disks.
3. NTFS write support for MAC using simple OS X Tweaks
Its a bit skill oriented task, so follow it carefully and at your own risk.
First connect your NTFS Drive into the Mac and open “Terminal” application and run the below command to find the UUID of your External NTFS Hard Disk. (My NTFS HDD name is “TOSHIBA”, Edit with your own Mac HDD name)
diskutil info /Volumes/TOSHIBA | grep UUID
Sample output:
Volume UUID: 45125EB1-E1C3-3D21-9484-32DE22FEF0
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Now enable read/write support for the Hard drive (based on UUID) run the below command, edit with your own Disk Volume UUID. This command add read write attribute to the /etc/fstab
sudo echo “UUID=<UUID> none ntfs rw,auto,nobrowse” >> /etc/fstab
example:
sudo echo “UUID=45125EB1-E1C3-3D21-9484-32DE22FEF0 none ntfs rw,auto,nobrowse” >> /etc/fstab
Now you will be able to perform both read and write to that NTFS formatted Hard drive from that Mac. If you got another NTFS hard drive, Follow the steps again to find that HDD’s UUID and enale the rw/wr .