Formatting External Hard Drive

[qvhong]

I have an old 200GB external HD that I made for my PC. The whole thing was partioned as a FAT32. This might be a stupid question, but is it possible to take the 100GB I have left on the Hard Drive and format it for my macbook pro?

 

[OutThere]

Your MBP shouldn't have a problem with FAT32.

To partition it with disk utility, you have to erase it. There are, however, live partitioning tools you can use, but I wouldn't recommend them.

 

[qvhong]

My MBP can read the files that were originally on the HD but can't write, so it's pretty much read-only. Should this happen? [I just made the "switch"]

 

[OutThere]

Sounds like the HD is formatted in NTFS, not FAT32, and OS X can only read from NTFS. If you have a way of backing up to another drive, you can then reformat the drive with a FAT32 partition and a OS X partition, otherwise you're pretty much stuck.

 

[qvhong]

Ahh, thanks for the help. I was afraid this would happen.