Lacie D2 formatting?

JLS · Oct 15, 2004

I have just bought an external lacie 250GB drive. I want to be able to use it on either a mac or PC. What should I do?

I know that it has to be FAT32 to be read on both, but windows can only convert to FAT32 up too 30GB... and im not partitioning my drive into 9 partitions..

Any help much appreciated.

Chaszmyr · Oct 15, 2004

I have one, and my memory is a bit hazy about when I got it, but I thought that right out of the box it could/would work with either Mac or PC. I could be wrong, but make sure you try if you haven't already.

JLS · Oct 15, 2004

In Windows Disk manager I only get the option to format as NTFS.

edit: Ive done some searching (on google), and im going to try this:

As for any external disk, once you connect it to your Windows machine, right click My Computer and click Manage. Now click on Disk Management on the left hand side. You should see your new drive. Right click the black area of the disk and click New Partition. Follow the prompts. When you come to the part about formatting, it most likely will not let you select FAT32, and if so, select Do Not Format. Continue on and when you click Finish, note the drive letter.

Now click Start then Run and type cmd and hit Enter.

Type the following command to format as FAT32:

format <drive letter> /FS:FAT32

where <drive letter> is the drive letter you noted above. If you have one hard disk partition and one optical drive, you will most likely use E:. Let's say it is E:, you would type:

format e: /FS:FAT32

Some other guy said he still couldn't do it.. I will see how I get on with that.

Chaszmyr · Oct 15, 2004

Are you sure Macs can't read NTFS? *really has no idea*

I checked my drive.. it has a mac formatting, so I suppose a PC couldn't read it.

tomf87 · Oct 15, 2004

JLS said:
In Windows Disk manager I only get the option to format as NTFS.

edit: Ive done some searching (on google), and im going to try this:

Some other guy said he still couldn't do it.. I will see how I get on with that.

Hey that was me! On here! Nice to know Google picks up some info here.

Anyway, I used that technique on 3 separate external hard disks with no issues. Let us know how it goes.

JLS · Oct 15, 2004

tomf87 said:
Hey that was me! On here! Nice to know Google picks up some info here.

Anyway, I used that technique on 3 separate external hard disks with no issues. Let us know how it goes.

Ha! Nice to see you

Ok well I followed those instructions, and now it says its file system is RAW, and it won't let me use it (if I click on the drive icon it says its not formatted)..

Any ideas?

tomf87 · Oct 15, 2004

If you are using Windows XP, it appears that XP can only format a 32GB partition. I was using Server 2003 during my deployment and had no issues there.

It's dumb that MS would limit XP to limit the format size when FAT32 will support volumes up to 2TB.

Ironically, Windows Me and 98 could format this drive at its native capacity.

EDIT: I read some forums and some people say that XP SP1 removed the 32GB limit. Do you have XP SP1?

EDIT AGAIN: Found this:
under Mac OS X using Disk Utility to format the drive as misleadingly named "MS-DOS File System". This limits you to one partition. If the drive is less than 2Gbytes in size, you will get a FAT16-formatted drive; otherwise you get a FAT32-formatted drive. This works for drives larger than 32 Gbytes.

from here.

EDIT FINAL: I did the above command in Disk Utility, and it took awhile longer than if I formatted as HFS+, but it worked and I was able to see a 200GB on a Dell running XP SP1.

JLS · Oct 15, 2004

Ok how about formatting it using windows 98.. as that doesn't even use ntfs. My friend has and old computer I could do this on.. how do you format external USB drives in win98?.. its been so long I can't remember!..

Would that work?

Thanks

yellow · Oct 15, 2004

Mac OS X can READ NTFS.
10.3.5 has limited write capabilities to NTFS.

JLS · Oct 15, 2004

yellow said:
Mac OS X can READ NTFS.
10.3.5 has limited write capabilities to NTFS.

Hmm.. let me think. With a 250GB HDD im sure at some point I will want to take stuff off a mac I guess. Its probably better to get it to a format that both can write too before I fill it with stuff and then won't have the ability to format it.

Is there any plans for OSX to ever be able to write onto ntfs? Thanks for the info.

yellow · Oct 15, 2004

JLS said:
Is there any plans for OSX to ever be able to write onto ntfs? Thanks for the info.

I can only assume that they are attempting to overcome the "limitations*" in the OS to fully support the NTFS disk format. While I don't expect Panther (maybe with 10.3.6 or 10.3.7, but I doubt it) to every fully support it, I expect Tiger to get much closer to getting the job done.

* I don't know what those limitations are, exactly, just that they exist.

JLS · Oct 15, 2004

Right.. im going crazy here. I walked half way across town to use a friends win98 pc, but the damn thing didn't support usb 2, and the 1.1 drivers on the lacie website didn't work.

I could try windows server 2003 corp edition, but on all the websites it says that you can only format up too 32GB..

Any ideas?

tomf87 · Oct 15, 2004

JLS said:
Right.. im going crazy here. I walked half way across town to use a friends win98 pc, but the damn thing didn't support usb 2, and the 1.1 drivers on the lacie website didn't work.

I could try windows server 2003 corp edition, but on all the websites it says that you can only format up too 32GB..

Any ideas?

Yeah, check my final edit on my previous post. Use OS X to format it as stated above. Worked fine on a 200GB I tested with today.

JLS · Oct 15, 2004

..only thing is, I don't have access to a mac at the moment...

tomf87 · Oct 15, 2004

JLS said:
..only thing is, I don't have access to a mac at the moment...

Ahhh.. I missed that one. You are really going to need a Win98 / Me machine (with USB patches for Win98) for this then.

DId you buy it from Apple? If so, maybe you could take it an Apple Store and see if they'll let you format the drive there.

JLS · Oct 15, 2004

The USB drivers for 98 didn't work, and the instructions for installing it on 98 include putting the 'lacie storage utilities' cd in.. but I bought the drive as a refurb.. with no cd.

Looks like im going to have to dig out my windows ME cd, and an old hard drive and open my pc up... oh what fun.

JLS · Oct 15, 2004

Sorry to double post, but I have a new question.

Does anyone know if the '4GB per file with FAT32' affects windows xp, or is that a statment from ye olden days?

brap · Oct 18, 2004

JLS said:
Sorry to double post, but I have a new question.

Does anyone know if the '4GB per file with FAT32' affects windows xp, or is that a statment from ye olden days?

Nope.

I got my 320GB D2 Extreme today, and tested it for the hell of it. Formatted to 'MS-DOS file system', it wouldn't handle the 4GB unreal DVD ISO I tried to store (Using my Powerbook). Monkeynuts, man.

JLS · Oct 18, 2004

Well I got it formatted by wiping my laptop, installing windows ME on it, then formatting the lacie, then re-installing xp on the laptop.. all for the sake of getting fat32.

Its a bit dissapointing the max file size I can put on it is 4GB, but I doubt I will have many anyway.

I copied all my stuff onto it (to free up my main hdd's) and I've only got 58GB free now! lol

Thanks everyone for you help

brap · Oct 18, 2004

JLS said:
Well I got it formatted by wiping my laptop, installing windows ME on it, then formatting the lacie, then re-installing xp on the laptop.. all for the sake of getting fat32.

Jees.

I tried to get FAT32 and HFS+ on the same drive, but it was... complicated, and a stupid way of doing things. I need the 4GB+ filesize, and CCC functionality, so now I have a 320Gb HFS+ volume, and 240Gb of data on NTFS volumes I need to back up

Might end up getting one of those 2.5" travel HDDs to clone my PB onto. What a mess!

JLS · Oct 18, 2004

Jees.

well my tale was actually more complicated than that. I bought the hdd to get stuff off my laptop (as im selling it) and my PC was TOTALLY full. And I didn't want to delete the stuff (hence buying the damn D2 in the first place) I had to dig out an old 10GB IDE HDD, open my PC, unplug my dvd drive (not enough ide ports) then use gaffer (duct) tape to basically hang it off the inside of the tower in a sort of hammock (not enough bays), then copy my laptop stuff too it (across my home network) before using the laptop to format the d2, then I had to copy all the stuff from the 'hanging' hdd to the d2, before removing it, closing my computer up and reformatting my laptop to install xp and all my apps.

What a fun evening that was.

brap · Oct 18, 2004

JLS said:
...What a fun evening that was.

See, when you're 60, sitting having a quiet pint, reminiscing...

...you'll remember just how much of your life you've wasted on stupid s**t like that. I know I will. Mercifully my patience is now too short, I just purchased MacDrive6 and was done with it. Sweet, financially insecure bliss.

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