External harddrive formatting issue

[FHIZ]

Okay, first off. Long story short I want my harddrive to be readable by my Xbox 360. I'm well aware of it needing to be in FAT32, and how to put it in that through disk utility and formatting it to MS-DOS. I infact had it running on my 360 as a test after I put about half my videos on it, then plugged the harddrive back into my MBP to finish putting everything on it.

Apparently my MBP turned it back into the regular Mac formatting? OS X Extended Journal or whatever it is. Now I can move files that are bigger than 4gb, and it won't show up on my Xbox any more. This makes no sense, I didn't do anything formatting wise after I got it working, does anyone know what the issue is/how I can put it back into FAT32 with out taking my media off and putting it on again? I'm running the latest version of Snow Leopard if that helps.

 

[Creative One]

You can't. Changing the formatting of a disk, completely erases it, because it must change the partition structure.

There is no way.

 

[FHIZ]

I'm just confused as to how it went from FAT32 back to the OS X formatting with out me actually doing anything.

 

[quantum003]

You can create a second partition on that hard drive with Disk Utility and then format that partition to be FAT32. That would allow your hard drive to be used by your XBOX and also not lose your current data.

 

[quantum003]

I'm just confused as to how it went from FAT32 back to the OS X formatting with out me actually doing anything.

Somehow I doubt it happened quite like that. Reformatting a disk like that is not a small thing and your MBP wouldn't auto-magically do it.