External hard drive help

[jTreu]

I had an extra 40GB hard drive lying around from an older desktop and i bought one of those cheap enclosures on ebay so i could use it to back up documents and music. It came today but the drivers are on a mini disc, and i dont think i can use those in my macbooks drive, right? Any ideas on how i can get my laptop to see the drive?

 

[iPhil]

If the Disk Utility sees the new ext. drive then format from there

 

[davidleon]

Have you tried connecting the drive to the enclosure and attaching it to your Mac via USB/Firewire? You probably don't need the drivers.

 

[jTreu]

yes, i tried connecting it, and conecting and restarting it, and i cant get it to show up in disk utility. btw, its windows formatted if that makes a difference.

 

[jTreu]

can anyone help me out?

 

[Athee]

Reformat it using diskutility in a MAC readable file structure. You may also find the drivers online.

 

[iPhil]

yes, i tried connecting it, and conecting and restarting it, and i cant get it to show up in disk utility. btw, its windows formatted if that makes a difference.

Plug the drive back in XP box and re-format the drive to Fat32 format.. Then Mac OS X will see the drive.. Fat 32 file system has a 4GB limit per file..


If your gonna turn the ext. drive into backup (time machine drive) or boot drive then you need reformat it after you get to fat32 format.. Boot drive in Mac.. It should be formatted in HFS+ done in Disk Utility..


Time Machine drive setup @ fat32 stage ... Watch this video.. on how to setup TM and save tons of space too..