Do External Hard Drives Need To Be Formatted?

[KARROT]

I just purchased a 500gb My Book Pro for video editing. Does it need to be formatted? The manual gives instructions for the formatting and a web site - but the web page won't open. Any help would be appreciated.

[swiftaw]

Yes, it probably does. Just plug it in, open Disk Utility and format it from there.

[MacBlackBook22]

I just purchased a 500gb My Book Pro for video editing. Does it need to be formatted? The manual gives instructions for the formatting and a web site - but the web page won't open. Any help would be appreciated.

I reformatted my 4 external hard drives go to Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.
Then click on the external drive then click on erase then reformat it to the journalled and name it what you want

[Tracer]

If your using video, you'll want to format it to HFS+.

It'll probably be default formatted to FAT32 or NTFS.

Mac can write to FAT32 but only 4GB Max File Size.

Mac can't write to NTFS, but can have files >4GB.

Tracer.

[KARROT]

Is HFS+ and Mac OS Extended (journaled) the same thing? Since I am using it only on a Mac, do I only have one Partition? - Thanks again for all the help.

[mkrishnan]

Is HFS+ and Mac OS Extended (journaled) the same thing? Since I am using it only on a Mac, do I only have one Partition? - Thanks again for all the help.

Yes and yes. You should use Mac OS Extended (journaled), and you only need one partition, unless you have a specific reason for a second (e.g. keeping a separate bootable backup or something like that).

I just got a 500GB drive (7200.10 Seagate Barracuda, SATA enclosure) too and went through partitioning. My uses are different, but anyway I ended up making five Mac OS Extended (journaled) partitions... two each for backing up two different computers' internal drives, and then a fifth spillover drive. :) But for your use, one partition may be plenty. :)

[KARROT]

Thanks so much for the advice/help. Wish I had found this site a long time ago. All the info is great!

[KARROT]

If I wanted to partition part of the drive, (41gb), in case I wanted some PC data, would I follow the same steps?