external HDD problem

[Joel Beason]

Hey everyone,
I have had an external hdd, for about 6 months now, (300 gb) and I formatted it to windows xp, but I partioned it so, it only usd 180 gigs of it on windows, then I was having problems with itunes so i opened the other 100 gigs, now Im wondering if there is a way that I can make is so I can actually put files on it from my mac, intsead of the mac just being able to read it, Thanks for the help

 

[mkrishnan]

You major options are to format the 100 gig partition to be FAT32 or to install an extension for a filesystem called EXT2FS (it's a Linuxy filesystem that's relatively comparable in features to HFS+). You have to use special drivers to mount it either on Win or on Mac, but with the drivers, you can mount it on both. Third option is to make it HFS+ and use MacDrive in Windows. I think, of the three, EXT2FS is the best, if you don't need to be able to use it on lots of computers that you cannot install the extension on. Otherwise, FAT32 is the most widely usable.

 

[Queso]

The only HD format that both Windows and OSX can read and write to is FAT32. Your drive sounds like it's formatted as NTFS. Unfortunately you can't use Windows' built-in convert.exe command to change an NTFS partition to a FAT one, so you'll have to copy the data off that drive, reformat it as FAT32, then copy the data back.

 

[mkrishnan]

This Guide has information on the EXT2FS option.

http://guides.macrumors.com/Drives_and_Filesystems

 

[Joel Beason]

okay, so I was going to get rid on the smaller partion on the hard drive, but when I try to just delete that it tells me that I have to delete both, is there anyway around this, because the hard drive on the computer isn't big enough to hold everything, thanks