unable to use westernal digital drive

i have a macbook pro and a portable hdd 250gb from western digital. when i connect the hdd i can access files from it and open them, copy them to the mac but i cannot copy anything from the mac to the hdd or create new folders on it. please help

it might be mounting as read only. Or check the permissions on the folders

new mac user so how do i do that? how do i check and how do i change the read only to read/write.

whats the connection
do you know the formatting??

<--- reps always nice

I found my external 250GB Western Digital drive didn't work properly or at all via Firewire. This was bought in 07, but if you post the connection form then that might help us answer your question.

the problem probably isnt the connection its probably the formating
if you dont know how to check it you go to "disk utility" and select the disk and it will be down at the bottom

I too think that i maybe a formatting problem,
if you are able to look at the files and not edit them that is most prob the case
i encountered a similar problem not too long ago.
Make sure your WD is on FAT and not NTFS.

yah FAT32 would be the best way to go if you want the contents of the drive to be read by mac and pc but if you only want/need to use and view it on a mac format it as Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

Check it's formatting in Disk Utility...

Found in /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app

Connect it, select the partition, see what formatting it uses ... (FAT32, Mac OS X Journaled (HFS+), or NTFS. My guess is that it's NTFS.... and Macs cannot write on NTFS formatting... or at least without 3rd party software.)

Check it's formatting in Disk Utility...

Found in /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app

Connect it, select the partition, see what formatting it uses ... (FAT32, Mac OS X Journaled (HFS+), or NTFS. My guess is that it's NTFS.... and Macs cannot write on NTFS formatting... or at least without 3rd party software.)