However, to change permission to do something is pretty straightforward, and we'll show you how to do that. When your Mac doesn't have read and write permissions, it will not let you make any changes to the files stored on that drive. Let's jump into that reason.Īs we mentioned earlier, to delete any files from your external hard drive, you must have read and write permissions. So, having an external hard drive formatted as NTFS would not be able to delete any files. Mac supports reading data from NTFS drives by default but not writing. Therefore, to edit, delete or even create new files on an NTFS drive, you need to have read and write permissions. However, nothing to worry about as both the issues are easily fixable and explained below for you.ġ. There might be two potential reasons that wouldn't let you delete files from your external hard drive Mac. Why Can't I Delete Files on My External Hard Drive Mac? Step 1: To forcefully delete a file, you need to launch the Terminal.

Step 1: First, you need to connect your external hard drive to your Mac and launch Finder. How to Delete Files from External Hard Drive Mac? Step 1: First, connect your external hard drive to your Mac, launch Finder on your Mac, and go to. 1. Why Can't I Delete Files on My External Hard Drive Mac?Īn external hard drive is formatted as NTFS and doesn't have read/write permissions.

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