apps that can format a blank external hard drive

[Sossity]

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.

 

[robbieduncan]

Disk Utility. It's in /Applications/Utilities/

 

[Jaffa Cake]

Disk Utility will do the job for you – it's in your Apps folder, in Utilities.

 

[Sossity]

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?

 

[robbieduncan]

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.

 

[MacDawg]

Typically Mac's don't need defragging
Disk Optimization

But there are utilities for it
iDefrag

Not sure how that would apply to an external disk

 

[Sossity]

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?

 

[GGJstudios]

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