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Make Hard Drive work with Windows and Mac?

FF_productions

FF_productions

macrumors 68030
Original poster
This should be a quick answer...

I have a hard drive that has been in my PC and I would like to format it so that my Mac can read and write on it and my PC can read and write on it...Is this possible?
 
FF_productions said:
This should be a quick answer...

I have a hard drive that has been in my PC and I would like to format it so that my Mac can read and write on it and my PC can read and write on it...Is this possible?
Click to expand...

Yes. Format FAT32, assuming you can format it that way. Most notebooks however come equipped with NTFS drives by default that can't be formatted FAT32.
 
According to disk utility, it is a MS-DOS File System, do I have to format it with my PC? Is there a program for OSX that will let me just do this on my Mac. I'm clueless...
 
You format it with the Mac, and since it doesn't do any error-checking you check it with the PC. Format an MS-DOS drive on the Mac using Disk Utility, then mount it on a PC and Check it (scan for bad sectors or whatever it is switch).
 
So after I do this I will be able to read/write on Mac and Windows? I'm swapping between a G4 tower and a PC tower.
 
yes. you format it as FAT32 on the Mac and then check it on the windows machine for errors. after that, you can read and write from both machines.

good luck!
 
You could just use it after the format, but there's no way to tell if there are bad sectors on the hard disk. So you're best off using a Windows box to run a full check on it (check for bad sectors switch = on). On a several hundred gig disk it'll take a few hours but you will have a disk that you have some confidence in afterwards. You can't format a FAT32 partition bigger than 32gb in Windows, but you can check a FAT32 partition of any size.
 
FF_productions said:
I've had this hard drive for over a year, how could there be bad sectors?
Click to expand...

It could have developed on an area you haven't written to so far. You never know.
 
Ok..formatted..Now I'm moving files back to the hard drive and then I'm going to test it on PC.

So far so good..

What my plan has been is to show my dad how OSX works, I hope he doesn't come home early and see his PC on the ground all opened up with his hard drive missing!!😱

Thanks for the help!!
 
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