Mac does not recognise my Maxtor HDD

[Adikavi]

Hi, I have a Mac G4 series desktop which runs on OS X Snow leopard 10.6. I need to back up all my data to my external hard drive but the problem is my Mac does not recognize the Maxtor external drive. Whenever i try to put some data on that drive from my Mac. I get an error message saying it is not editable. I want to back up all my data as my Mac is not working properly. I don't know what the problem is. Is there any other way to get the back-up?

[Calvin K]

Check if you are logged in an Administrator account. It seems you don't have rights to edit the data. Get a administrator log in and password and then try to take back-up. If you are using an Administrator account then edit the file sharing permissions of the files. You can do it by going into preferences and then assign the permissions on data according to your need.

[Dr. V]

The hard drive may be full and is not allowing the files to be added on it. This is a common problem with using an external hard drive. Sometimes it happens that the hard drive is full but does not show the message that it is full. Connect the drive to your mac then delete some data which is not important. After deleting check the space available and then try to add files to it.

[Rajesh4mLA]

May be the Hard drive is faulty and not letting data to be written on it. There are various utilities available online to check the hard drive. Download one such utility and run the tests on the hard drive. The test will show the problems on the hard drive if there are any. Also some utilities can repair the problems if they are repairable. Choose the utility according to your need and get the hard drive checked. Also check the cable and the port to which the hard drive is connected.

[mv]

Have you checked the format in which the hard drive is formatted? MAC systems can only write the data to hard drives which are formatted either MAC HD format. Check the format in which the hard drive is formatted. If it is not in MAC HD format then connect the drive to your mac and format it. After formatting check if you can add data to it or not.

[Elijah]

The only format mac systems are not able to write is NTFS. There is a software called NTFS for MAC which enables mac systems to read and write to an NTFS formatted drive. This software only helps if the drive is formatted using NTFS and not otherwise. You can use syncing software such as Sugar Sync to take back up of your data on a remote computer over internet. But this helps only if the data is less.