Formating hard drive

[MacDonaldsd]

Is there a way of formating and external hard drive half mac os extended and half fat 32.

Reason for this is i want to use virtual pc from this disk and it requires mac os extended to work, and I need the fat 32 file format to transfer data(music , documents etc) to and from a windows pc

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Shouldn't be a problem. Just make two partitions with Disk Utility and choose different formatting on the two partitions.

You could also make all of it in FAT32, which should be fine for moving data between Macs, too... ;)

[grapes911]

It may be a problem. OS X doesn't always like to put two different file systems on one drive. You may have to make the FAT32 partition on Windows machine and the HFS+ partition on a Mac. Once you get them both formated, OS X will read both fine. It's just that initial partition stage that can get tricky.

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Never had any problems with that. Formatted the HD in my old Pismo, one big one in HFS+ the other smaller in FAT32, back when I went all OS X. Before that I had 4 partitions, one for OS X, one for Home, one small for OS 9 and a fourth small one in FAT32 for sharing.

[grapes911]

I was pretty sure I used OS X to partition my external hard drive into a HFS and a FAT. I tried it on my flash drive and it didn't work. I looked into it and it seems sometimes OS X won't let you and it's sort of common. I have no idea why.

[yellow]

part of the problem may be that you cannot format a partition as FAT32 on a Mac. One has to select the actual volume (info) in Disk Util to format the partition as FAT32. Which doesn't work for partitions. The only choices for partitions are (variations on) HFS, UFS, and Blank.

Maybe if you formatted the other partition on a PC..

[MacDonaldsd]

When you use disk utility you can ever pick to format as a mac, or as a pc.

So as I can make out you cant do fat 32 and extended together

[danny_w]

part of the problem may be that you cannot format a partition as FAT32 on a Mac. One has to select the actual volume (info) in Disk Util to format the partition as FAT32. Which doesn't work for partitions. The only choices for partitions are (variations on) HFS, UFS, and Blank.

Maybe if you formatted the other partition on a PC..
This is the default Mac partition table scheme. Check under Options and you can select Mac or PC partition tables. If you select the PC partition table format, then go back and select the partition type, FAT (or PC) is added to the list. If you format using a Mac partition table, the PC can't even see an 'unknown' partition on the drive, but sees the entire drive as blank. I believe if you format using a PC partition table, ehtn even if the only partitions are HFS+ the PC will still see the partition (probably as 'unknown').

[yellow]

It's definitely possible:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030613121738812

But that one at least requires Windows.


Check under Options and you can select Mac or PC partition tables. If you select the PC partition table format

I don't see any "Options" button in Erase or Partition tabs if that's what you're litterally meaning.

[MacDonaldsd]

Formated 3/4 of it in hfs left the other 1/4 free space

Pluged into pc thinking it would see the 1/4 left over, but no sees the whole thing as blank.

[jeremy.king]

Formated 3/4 of it in hfs left the other 1/4 free space

Pluged into pc thinking it would see the 1/4 left over, but no sees the whole thing as blank.

You followed the procedure in yellow's post?

[danny_w]

Formated 3/4 of it in hfs left the other 1/4 free space

Pluged into pc thinking it would see the 1/4 left over, but no sees the whole thing as blank.
That is because it is formatted using the Mac format partition table (note: I am talking about partition table format, not partition format). I am not at my Mac right now, but when I get home I will give the exact description of how to select the partition table type. I did it last night, and when I selected PC format it changed the partition type drop-down box to add FAT (or PC, I don't remember now).

[MacDonaldsd]

You can make it do fat32 but when you do that it overwrites Mac os formated partition with fat32 aswell

[superbovine]

It's definitely possible:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030613121738812



I was soooooo going to post that link

[MacDonaldsd]

Used the unix command

diskutil partitionDisk disk3 2 HFS+ Mac 30G MS-DOS PC 10G

and comes up with the 2 hard drives on my mac but not the even the fat 32 appears on the windows computers.

Any tips ?

[MacDonaldsd]

OK its all done and working 100%

I used terminal to do it as suggested in the above link

I had a 40 gb hard drive and I used the following command

diskutil partitionDisk disk3 2 MBRFormat HFS+ Mac 30G MS-DOS PC 10G


MBRFormat is what makes it visable by the PC

[danny_w]

OK its all done and working 100%

I used terminal to do it as suggested in the above link

I had a 40 gb hard drive and I used the following command

diskutil partitionDisk disk3 2 MBRFormat HFS+ Mac 30G MS-DOS PC 10G


MBRFormat is what makes it visable by the PC
I've never used the terminal format, but that is just exactly what I was trying to say in my note above. It is not the PARTITION format, but the PARTITION TABLE format that is the problem. In this case, MBRFormat is likely telling diskutil to set the PARTITION TABLE format to MBR, not Mac. This allows the PC to read the partition table and 'see' the partitions, but it doesn't know how to read a Mac-format partition table (regardless of what is in the partitions).