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I copied a movie on to a USB flash drive from my Windows computer. Now I am using that USB flash drive on my Mac and I am unable to delete that file. The file info looks like this
Any idea how I can change the permissions of the file to delete it?
Rajeshwar
Posted 2015-03-14T02:13:45.543
Reputation: 249
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If you are originally from the Windows world, and this USB flash drive was original for Windows use but you are now on a Mac and cannot delete a file off of this USB flash drive, I’m willing to bet that the USB flash drive was formatted in NTFS.
Mac OS X can only natively read NTFS file systems and cannot write to them so you cannot erase the data off of that disk in Mac OS X. So if you want to erase that file, you need to erase it on your Windows machine.
That said, if you need cross platform (Mac OS X and Windows) readability and writability for your USB flash drive, you should consider reformatting it using FAT32 or exFAT in the Mac OS X “Disk Utility.” Should work with Windows XP as long as SP2 has been applied to it, above and Windows Vista as long as SP1 has been applied to it as well as Windows 7 and above.
If having improved NTFS compatibility in Mac OS X is needed, there are a few third-party tools around that can help you setup Mac OS X for NTFS reading and writing. This site has a good rundown which boils down to doing the following:
JakeGould
Posted 2015-03-14T02:13:45.543
Reputation: 38 217
Yes the file system is NTFS. Thanks for clearing that up – Rajeshwar – 2015-03-14T02:19:47.630
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You can either format the drive to wipe out all content or reformat the drive as type FAT32 which OSX natively supports. Or you can install FUSE on your Mac that will allow R/W access to NTFS drives. It's available from http://macfuse.en.softonic.com/mac
– SaxDaddy – 2015-03-14T02:25:10.433Thanks for suggesting Fuse. Ill definitely give it a try. – Rajeshwar – 2015-03-14T02:26:24.820
@Jake see http://www.cnet.com/news/how-to-manually-enable-ntfs-read-and-write-in-os-x/ .. apparently writing is possible, but on a per-device basis.
– cutrightjm – 2015-03-14T02:26:48.690@ekaj Saw that, but per-device is a headache for removable media. Just posted the classic Mac FUSE/NTFS-3G recipe that most people use for more transparently dealing with this stuff. Maybe a future version of Mac OS X will finally allow NTDF writing without any hassle? We can hope. – JakeGould – 2015-03-14T02:33:14.667
@JakeGould, you've probably been working on a Mac long enough to know that the probable answer to your question is probably "when pigs fly" =-O – SaxDaddy – 2015-03-15T01:06:12.150
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This will get you a USB that works on Windows and OSX. It also fixes any non readable media, and can fix USB's that have been flashed as OS installers.
If you want to keep any files on your USB copy them over to your windows machine.
Now. Open up terminal by hitting command-space and write terminal, hit enter. In terminal write:
diskutil -list
this will show you a list of you storage devices, your USB stick should look something like this /dev/disk2 (external, physical):. basically look for external, physical and the right # of GB to ID your drive. One you know which is your USB drive in terminal write
diskutil eraseDisk free EMPTY /dev/disk2
let it do its thing, and you'll have a non formatted USB drive. I assume at this point you want to format it for use with Windows and OSX. in terminal write
diskutil eraseDisk FAT32 USB64 /dev/disk2
after it's done doing it thing you've got a USB stick that'll work on Windows and Mac OSX. Congratulate yourself. You've crushed it. :)
Jace Grebski
Posted 2015-03-14T02:13:45.543
Reputation: 21
1I used "Disk Utility" from Settings to do the same thing. Felt mildly safer doing it via a GUI rather than command line. – Duncan Jones – 2018-03-27T19:09:19.997
One clarification: Your question initially said, “flash” and I assume you mean, “USB flash drive” but just commenting to double-check. – JakeGould – 2015-03-14T02:16:19.810
Yes its a usb flash drive. – Rajeshwar – 2015-03-14T02:18:05.427