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Sossity

macrumors 65816
Original poster
May 12, 2010
1,360
32
are there any mac apps that can format a blank hard drive in an external enclosure to different formats like fat 32, NTFS, & macs native format, I have put together my own external hard drives with 72rpm hard drives in external enclosures & I prefer my drives to be cross platform to use on both a mac & PC.
 
Thanks, I will look into utilities, When I have the blank drive put together & plug it in for the first time into the mac, I just open up disk utility? or will it open automatically?

do external hard drives used with a mac need defragging like on windows? will 1 terabyte fat 32 formatted external hard drives work on a mac?

and some of these hard drives I have been using with windows, should I defrag them before switching & using on a mac?
 
Thanks, I will look into utilities, do external hard drives used with a mac need defragging like on windows?

If they are HFS+ (Mac native format) then no. If they are a Windows format then whatever the Microsoft recommendation for that format is.
 
so if it is fat 32 it will need defragging? how would I do this while using it on a mac? what if I just have it connected to a mac most if not all the time?
 
FAT32 (File Allocation Table)
  • Read/Write FAT32 from both native Windows and native Mac OS X.
  • Maximum file size: 4GB.
  • Maximum volume size: 2TB
NTFS (Windows NT File System)
  • Read/Write NTFS from native Windows.
  • Read only NTFS from native Mac OS X
  • To Read/Write/Format NTFS from Mac OS X: Install NTFS-3G for Mac OS X (free)
  • Some have reported problems using Tuxera (approx 33USD).
  • Native NTFS support can be enabled in Snow Leopard, but is not advisable, due to instability.
  • Maximum file size: 16 TB
  • Maximum volume size: 256TB
HFS+ (Hierarchical File System, a.k.a. Mac OS Extended)
  • Read/Write HFS+ from native Mac OS X
  • Required for Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner backups of Mac internal hard drive.
  • To Read/Write HFS+ from Windows, Install MacDrive
  • To Read HFS+ (but not Write) from Windows, Install HFSExplorer
  • Maximum file size: 8EiB
  • Maximum volume size: 8EiB
exFAT (FAT64)
  • Supported in Mac OS X only in 10.6.5 or later.
  • exFAT partitions created with OS X 10.6.5 are inaccessible from Windows 7
  • Not all Windows versions support exFAT. See disadvantages.
  • exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table)
  • Maximum file size: 16 EiB
  • Maximum volume size: 64 ZiB
 
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