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Formatting a SATA with NTFS on Mac Pro

M

maglite

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 30, 2008
9
0
I've just got a Mac pro and have fitted it out with 4 hard drives. I want to use a couple of hard drives for Windows stuff, one for the Windows OS and installed programs and the other for Windows data.

I've created the Windows OS install using bootcamp and I see that on this drive there is a 200MB GPT partition which I presume contains the Bootcamp BIOS emulation stuff. So far, so good.

Now, I want to format the 2nd drive as NTFS. I cannot do so under Windows as the drive is listed as protected. I thought about this and came to the conclusion that a quick way of doing this was to re-run the bootcamp install and let it install the partition on this drive and not complete the bootcamp install process. Well, this let me then format the drive under NTFS (the Windows one is 500GB and the data one is 1TB so I cannot format using FAT32).

Only problem now, when the Mac boots into Windows there is about a 10 second delay whilst it works out which bootcamp partition actually has a Windows install and then it boots into Windows.

Does anyone else know a cleaner way to do this which might be the right approach?

The only other option I can see is to take the drive out of the Mac Pro, mount it in a temp chassis and hook it up to my Windows laptop and format it as NTFS.

thanks
 
S

stainlessliquid

macrumors 68000
Sep 22, 2006
1,622
0
try formatting it in HFS+ with disk utility, then boot into windows and delete the partition (something like: start>administration tools>computer management>storage), then recreate it.
 
AppleNewton

AppleNewton

macrumors 68000
Apr 3, 2007
1,697
84
1 Finite Place
A safe way to do it so it doesnt put too much hassle on the harddrive is to do this.

1. Keep the drive in your MacPro
2. Boot into Windows
3. Download this:
http://support.wdc.com/download/?cxml=n&pid=15&swid=3
4. Run the WD Lifegaurd tools (regardless of Drive Make, it will recognize Seagate, WD, etc)
5, Select the partition or drive you want to format to NTFS and it will take care of it for in a matter of seconds.

I just received my 750AAKS and launched that handy utility and off i went.
took around 45sec-1min to format the entire drive.

and is already getting loaded up.

dont mess around with formatting it multiple times.

the lifegaurds too is essential i think an di use it alot to safely transfer data from one drive to another with less corruption issues

Cheers :)
 
sash

sash

macrumors 6502a
Nov 23, 2004
592
1
maglite said:
Now, I want to format the 2nd drive as NTFS.
Click to expand...

Hi,

In Windows XP Pro:

Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management

Disk Management is all you need in this situation, I think. Choose the drive you want to format, and go ahead...

sash
 
AppleNewton

AppleNewton

macrumors 68000
Apr 3, 2007
1,697
84
1 Finite Place
sash said:
Hi,

In Windows XP Pro:

Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management

Disk Management is all you need in this situation, I think. Choose the drive you want to format, and go ahead...

sash
Click to expand...

Sorry to threadjack, but from my experience doing alot of formatting and windows pctech work...the Disk Management in XP is garbage.
takes too long to format a drive and sometimes doesnt properly format.

I recommended the other software utility as its a great resource to check drives for consistency and accuracy.


cheers! :)
 
S

stainlessliquid

macrumors 68000
Sep 22, 2006
1,622
0
It has an option for "quick format", which only takes like 3 seconds or less. You never have to do a regular format. All formatting programs are equal if all youre doing is a quick format, disk utlity, windows, third party software, they all do the same thing to the drive. Regular formats scan the drive for errors which can take hours, quick formats simply just turn everything into freespace which is why it takes only a couple seconds.
 
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