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External hard disk question.

J

JohnathanSmith

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Hello everybody,

I'm currently using a blue and white G3 (512 Mb ram) and interested in buying an external hard disk.
Already found one, but it's not formatted. What I would like to know is the following:

1) Does it have to be formatted in order to work and does it have to be hfs? Will fat32 or Ntfs do the job or is it just for pc's?

2) Will I be able to format it using Norton utilities and if yes could you please let me know how?

Any help will be truly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.
J.
 
To make a disk usabel for any operating system you wil have to format it one way or another.

1) Using Mac OS X 10.2 or later, you can format the disk as HFS+, FAT 32 or NTFS, but using NTFS the disk will be read-only for the Mac.

If you want it to be able to read/write in both Mac an Windows environments, I think formatting as a FAT 32 filesystem will be easiest.
(You can format it as HFS+, but then you will have to install "MacDrive" on your PC to be able to access it)

2) have never used Norton to format a disk... maybe someone else?
 
Norton Futility's legend has faded into the misty past when it comes to OS X. Do not use it with your OS X volumes. Disk Utility is what you should use to format the drive, unless you plan on formatting it FAT. Then you should do it on a Windows box.
 
format it on the windows machine (preferably 2000) if you plan on using it cross-platform; those PCs still don't like to play with macs. my mac formated firewire HD won't mount on my Windows machine at work. 🙁

i plan on fixing that once i have my server up so i can shuffle around some files. 🙂 (400GB)


peace.
 
thanks for the info guys.

Does anyone have any experience using a LaCie 160GB Porsche FireWire Hard Drive 7200rpm on macOS 9.1?
Found it quite cheap and thinking of buying it...

thanks again
J.
 
JohnathanSmith said:
thanks for the info guys.

Does anyone have any experience using a LaCie 160GB Porsche FireWire Hard Drive 7200rpm on macOS 9.1?
Found it quite cheap and thinking of buying it...

thanks again
J.
Click to expand...
If I were you, I wouldn't worry too much. LaCie is a good brand, at least in my experience. I use a LaCie 160 GB FireWire drive to back up my system with using Carbon Copy Cloner. I'd go ahead and buy it (if you have a use for the extra storage).
 
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