external hard drive reformat

[Rozlinator]

i own a seagate freeagent goflex 500gig external hard drive and i want to use it with my ps3 and PCs but apparently i cant and after some research i think all i need to do is reformat it, but i have no idea how, if you could help it would be greatly appreciated

 

[Hellhammer]

Just use Disk Utility and format it to FAT32 (I think DU calls it MS-DOS). Remember that FAT32 has 4GB file size limit and reformatting erases all your data.

 

[Rozlinator]

hey thanks for the reply, but im not really good at this kind of thing and im not sure how to format it to FAT32 using disk utility, could you be a little more specific, thanks

 

[Hellhammer]

hey thanks for the reply, but im not really good at this kind of thing and im not sure how to format it to FAT32 using disk utility, could you be a little more specific, thanks

Open Disk Utility > Select your external HD from the sidebar > Click "Erase" tab > Select MS-DOS as format and give it a name > Click "Erase..."

 

[Rozlinator]

oh ok cool got it, thanks for your help

 

[Rozlinator]

just one more question about the 4 gig limit, i use time machine to back up my macbook, will i still be able to use it after the reformat?

 

[Hellhammer]

just one more question about the 4 gig limit, i use time machine to back up my macbook, will i still be able to use it after the reformat?

No, because Time Machine requires you to use HFS+ instead of FAT32. You can, however, create a partition for Time Machine and format it as HFS+.

 

[Rozlinator]

thanks so much for the help