External Hard Drive Help

Discussion in 'Mac Basics and Help' started by crunchyapple, Jun 28, 2007.

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  1. crunchyapple, Jun 28, 2007

    crunchyapple macrumors newbie

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    Jun 28, 2007
    #1
    Hi,

    I have a 15" MBP. I got (as a gift) a hard drive that was formatted in NTFS and I was reading some website about how to format it into HFS+ since I couldn't do anything with the hard drive with my Mac.

    Anyway, I launched disk utility and clicked Partition, but I guess I shouldn't have since the hard drive was ejected and now when I plug it into my USB ports it says "the disk you inserted was not readable by this computer" with three options: initialize, ignore, eject. When I plug it into a PC it doesn't load or show up at all.

    I don't have any data on the drive so I'll do anything to fix it! Losing data isn't a problem for me since the drive was empty to start with.

    Does anyone have any ideas??
     
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  2. Dimwhit, Jun 28, 2007

    Dimwhit macrumors 68000

    Dimwhit

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    Apr 10, 2007
    #2
    Will Disk Utility read it if you plug it in again? Click the 'Initialize' button when it comes up. I think that launches Disk Utility. Rather than Partition, just do an erase and pick the format you want. That should create a Mac-usable hard drive. If you want multiple partitions, do that next. Should work fine then.
     
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  3. crunchyapple, Jun 29, 2007

    crunchyapple thread starter macrumors newbie

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    Jun 28, 2007
    #3
    Wow, that was a lot easier than I thought it would be!

    Thanks!
     
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  4. heySparky, Jun 29, 2007

    heySparky macrumors regular

    heySparky

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    #4
    Isn't that one of the reasons you got a Mac?
     
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  5. james6000, Jul 8, 2007

    james6000 macrumors member

    james6000

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    #5
    Currently I have a NTFS formatted drive and moved all the data in order to format it. Which volume format should I use, there's so many options!! (Journaled, Case-sensitive etc)
     
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  6. frankblundt, Jul 8, 2007

    frankblundt macrumors 65816

    frankblundt

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    #6
    Generally, for Mac only use, just go with the standard: Mac OSX Extended (Journaled).
    If you need it be able to be used by Windows as well then choose MS-DOS (=FAT32) although it's a bit of an old dog as formats go, or get a copy of MacDrive which allows Windows to read/write to Mac formatted volumes
     
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