I just purchased a 500gb My Book Pro for video editing. Does it need to be formatted? The manual gives instructions for the formatting and a web site - but the web page won't open. Any help would be appreciated.
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Do External Hard Drives Need To Be Formatted?
- Thread starter KARROT
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MacBlackBook22
macrumors 6502
I reformatted my 4 external hard drives go to Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.
Then click on the external drive then click on erase then reformat it to the journalled and name it what you want
If your using video, you'll want to format it to HFS+.
It'll probably be default formatted to FAT32 or NTFS.
Mac can write to FAT32 but only 4GB Max File Size.
Mac can't write to NTFS, but can have files >4GB.
Tracer.
It'll probably be default formatted to FAT32 or NTFS.
Mac can write to FAT32 but only 4GB Max File Size.
Mac can't write to NTFS, but can have files >4GB.
Tracer.
Is HFS+ and Mac OS Extended (journaled) the same thing? Since I am using it only on a Mac, do I only have one Partition? - Thanks again for all the help.
mkrishnan
Moderator emeritus
Yes and yes. You should use Mac OS Extended (journaled), and you only need one partition, unless you have a specific reason for a second (e.g. keeping a separate bootable backup or something like that).
I just got a 500GB drive (7200.10 Seagate Barracuda, SATA enclosure) too and went through partitioning. My uses are different, but anyway I ended up making five Mac OS Extended (journaled) partitions... two each for backing up two different computers' internal drives, and then a fifth spillover drive. 🙂 But for your use, one partition may be plenty. 🙂
Thanks so much for the advice/help. Wish I had found this site a long time ago. All the info is great!
If I wanted to partition part of the drive, (41gb), in case I wanted some PC data, would I follow the same steps?