Parallels won't recognize external hard drives

[APPLENEWBIE]

Neither of my external hard drives (USB) show up in windows "my computer", although they do seem to be recognized by windows ("You can get better performance from a USB 2... etc.... or something to that effect). In the Parallels frame around windows in the USB controller gizmo, they do show up... any ideas?

[wrldwzrd89]

Neither of my external hard drives (USB) show up in windows "my computer", although they do seem to be recognized by windows ("You can get better performance from a USB 2... etc.... or something to that effect). In the Parallels frame around windows in the USB controller gizmo, they do show up... any ideas?
If they're HFS formatted, the reason is because Windows doesn't understand the HFS filesystem.

[APPLENEWBIE]

If they're HFS formatted, the reason is because Windows doesn't understand the HFS filesystem.

How do I tell how it is formatted? If it is HFS, how does one change it to what ever it should be? Is there a way for the drive to be read/wrote by both windows and OS X? Thanks for your help.

[aristobrat]

FWIW,

Windows and OS X can both read/write to a FAT32 formatted drive.

Only OS X can read HFS formatted drives.

Windows can read/write to a NTFS formatted drive, but OS X can only read.

[wrldwzrd89]

How do I tell how it is formatted? If it is HFS, how does one change it to what ever it should be? Is there a way for the drive to be read/wrote by both windows and OS X? Thanks for your help.
Disk Utility can tell you. Open it up, and select the disk in question. Its format will be shown along with the other info for the disk, somewhere in Disk Utility.

If it is HFS, I recommend either making it FAT32 (if smaller than 32GB) or making it NTFS and using the NTFS-3G drivers (http://googlemac.blogspot.com/2007/01/taming-mac-os-x-file-systems.html) to use your NTFS drive from your Mac.