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MxChase

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 27, 2010
2
0
Okay, I'll first say that I'm really not very good with this kind of stuff so try and stay with me. I own a pc and a mac. I recently bought an IOMEGA External Hard Drive 1.5tb. I hooked it up to my mac thinking I could put all my pictures on it and then transfer them to my PC. Now, when I hook it up to my PC it doesn't read it. I found out that it is because it is now formatted to mac OS X. Can anyone tell me how to change it back to NTFS?
 

cocacolakid

macrumors 65816
Dec 18, 2010
1,108
20
Chicago
Just download MacDrive for Windows, it will recognize the hard drive and let you move everything over. Once Windows detects the drive you should be able to reformat it to NTFS if you want.

MacDrive has a free trial version that should do the trick. You'll have to buy it if you want to keep switching between the two systems or buy some software for the Mac that will allow you to read/write to NTFS drives. Paragon's NTFS for Mac OS X or Tuxera's NTFS for Mac both work fine and cost $20-30 US.
 
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MxChase

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 27, 2010
2
0
Just download MacDrive for Windows, it will recognize the hard drive and let you move everything over. Once Windows detects the drive you should be able to reformat it to NTFS if you want.

MacDrive has a free trial version that should do the trick. You'll have to buy it if you want to keep switching between the two systems or buy some software for the Mac that will allow you to read/write to NTFS drives. Paragon's NTFS for Mac OS X or Tuxera's NTFS for Mac both work fine and cost $20-30 US.

Thank You! If that works you will have saved me a ton of money.
 

iThinkergoiMac

macrumors 68030
Jan 20, 2010
2,664
4
Terra
I would just use NTFS-3G, as it's free. It allows read/write on the Mac side and I've never had a problem with it. This would allow you to do the whole thing for free.

It seems Tuxera is the commercial version of NTFS-3G. But NTFS-3G itself is open source and therefore free. Scroll down a bit to find it.
 

cocacolakid

macrumors 65816
Dec 18, 2010
1,108
20
Chicago
I would just use NTFS-3G, as it's free. It allows read/write on the Mac side and I've never had a problem with it. This would allow you to do the whole thing for free.

It seems Tuxera is the commercial version of NTFS-3G. But NTFS-3G itself is open source and therefore free. Scroll down a bit to find it.

Thanks, that's what I was looking for the other day to recommend to the OP but I could only find the newer commercial version. OP, the free one is still on that page, scroll down to find the download. Once you format the HD back to NTFS you can use this software on your Mac to be able to write to it (otherwise you can only read off a NTFS formatted disc on a Mac).
 
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