Formatting External for Mac and PC usage both... not sure how this works

The problem is you tried to format the drive into fat32 In Windows.

The correct answer is format it into fat32 on the OSX side of things(or a 3rd party windows utility). That will allow partition sizes up to 120gb. And, Windows will recognize that partition size just fine. It's just MS wants to make people use NTFS so they limit their OS to creating a maximum 32gb size fat32 partition, when in reality fat32 can go up to 120gb(or in reality up to 2TB, you just need an updated Windows 2000 or higher OS to recognize anything beyond 120gb. Older versions of windows and MS-Dos are limited to 120gb)

 

Use OS X's disk utility to format it to FAT32 (Called "MS-DOS file system.") The 32gig partition limit is an artificial one imposed by Microsoft's format utility in XP to try to force people to use NTFS.

Keep in mind, though you can format and use the whole drive with FAT32, you will not be able to write any single files larger than 4GB to it.

EDIT: Drat! Too slow! SolrFlare, I'm never having a "pistols at dawn, twenty paces" duel with you, that's for sure.

 

Lol no problem. You beat me to the 4gb file size limit though so it's all good

 

As others said, you'll do OK using FAT32 (unless you want to keep DVD ISOs or other files larger than 4 GB). The problem is that FAT32 is an old filesystem, prone to corruption and fragmentation problems... If you'll be using the drive in you PC only, then I suggest installing a program in it so you can use the HFS+ filesystem there as well (wich is vastly superior). The only one I've heard of is MacDrive, wich you can find here:http://www.mediafour.com/ .

Hope that helps

Duh! Now I read your post again and saw you don't want to use MacDrive... I should pay more attention. But I think you should give it a shot anyway.

 

Anybody have problems deleting files off external media on a mac? I have a western digital passport and a sandisk cruzer and can't really delete things off of it. They're both formatted to fat32. The files do "delete" but they don't free up the space on the drives. Instead I have to go to windows, click show hidden files, and delete hidden folders that are labeled .trashes or something.

 

I've notice that also. Anyone have any solution or is that the only way to go about deleting stuff.

 

Just do an Empty Trash on the Mac.

When you delete from an external drive, it moves the files to .Trash on the drive, not your boot drive. But doing just the same as if you deleted files from your boot drive works.