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lordpuffer
Legalize It Joe!
Premium Member
join:2004-09-19
Old Town, ME

lordpuffer to Sweet Witch

Premium Member

to Sweet Witch

Re: [Beginner] tiny little mac?

You can also click anywhere on the desktop, then click on "Go" at the top left and you will see the Applications folder.

Sweet Witch
Be the flame, not the moth.
MVM
join:2003-07-15
Gallifrey

Sweet Witch

MVM

Ok, I've gotten into it, it sees the disk so I clicked on it then tried to drag a file over - nope. So I chose Repair Disk. It just won't let me drag and drop.

lordpuffer
Legalize It Joe!
Premium Member
join:2004-09-19
Old Town, ME

lordpuffer

Premium Member

I believe that you first need to go through the steps in the link I posted to format the flash drive for a Mac. Then you can either drag and drop or copy/paste the files to the drive.

Thinkdiff
MVM,
join:2001-08-07
Bronx, NY

1 recommendation

Thinkdiff

MVM,

No! Don't reformat the USB drive. If you format it as HFS+, it won't work on PCs.. there's no reason to reformat it unless the OP reformatted it to NTFS on the PC for some reason.

OP: Click anywhere on the desktop. from the Go Menu select "Home". A Finder window will pop up (same thing as an Explorer window on Windows). In the small sidebar on that window (not the Dock), there should be a "DEVICES" list. Your USB drive will show up there, most likely as "UNTITLED". Find the files/folders you want to copy and drag them to that icon in the DEVICES list. It should look something like the picture above. Notice the "Storage" device, that's my extra hard drive.

If for some reason you do not see this sidebar, while the window is at the foreground go to the "View" menu and select "Show Sidebar".

lordpuffer
Legalize It Joe!
Premium Member
join:2004-09-19
Old Town, ME

lordpuffer

Premium Member

I believe that the OP stated above that it was already formatted on a laptop PC.

Thinkdiff
MVM,
join:2001-08-07
Bronx, NY

Thinkdiff

MVM,

The default for PCs is to format a USB flash drive as FAT, which a Mac can read and write. If you format the drive as HFS+, the PC won't read it. If you format it as GPT w/ FAT, the PC might read it. You have to format it as MBR w/ FAT to make sure the PC will read it, which is completely unnecessary as the flash drive is most likely already this format. Every flash drive I've ever purchased has worked on Macs and PCs out of the box.

Sweet Witch
Be the flame, not the moth.
MVM
join:2003-07-15
Gallifrey

Sweet Witch

MVM

I finally got it to work, but only after I formatted it on the mac as MS-DOS. I can check it before I leave and redo if necessary but for the moment, I'm done for the night.

I'll tell you though, I haven't seen such a slow transfer in a long time! 15 minutes to do a GB?

Mike
Mod
join:2000-09-17
Pittsburgh, PA

Mike

Mod

Ton of small files across a gig on USB 2? It'll take a bit.

Sweet Witch
Be the flame, not the moth.
MVM
join:2003-07-15
Gallifrey

Sweet Witch

MVM

It took about 17 minutes to move everything to my lappy, over an hour from the mac to the drive. Both USB2.

rjackal
Premium Member
join:2002-07-09
Plymouth, MI

rjackal

Premium Member

It takes longer to write to Flash memory (USB stick) than it does to read from it. Mac/PC/Linux, doesn't matter.