Formatting External HD

Discussion in 'Mac Basics and Help' started by nmals23, Apr 30, 2007.

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  1. nmals23, Apr 30, 2007

    nmals23 macrumors newbie

    Joined:
    Mar 10, 2007
    Location:
    Beaverton, OR
    #1
    I recently bought a LaCie Rugged HD (120GB) and will primarily use it to transfer music/movies/pictures between multiple PC's and my new MacBook (I'm a long time PC user and am making the switch).

    I know I need to format the HD in Fat32 in order to transfer the files between both computers, however when I try to do this I can only format 32GB's in Fat32. The only way I can see to get around this is to partition the entire 120GB HD in 32GB Fat32 sections.....am I doing this right?

    Naturally I would like to format the whole thing into one huge Fat32 chunk, but I can't seem to do that with my system (Windows XP).

    Anyway, I just want to see if I'm going about this the right way, and if not, can somebody please help this Mac Newbie out?

    Thanks in advance for the help. :)

    -nm
     
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  2. varmit, Apr 30, 2007

    varmit macrumors 68000

    varmit

    Joined:
    Aug 5, 2003
    #2
    The program from Intech Software is what you need. http://www.speedtools.com/DrivePC.shtml But unless you purchased the drive from Other World Computing you wont get it for free. I had it at one point but I stopped moving the drive back and forth between the computers so I deleted it. It will get annoying have to plug and unplug when you want to move the drive. I suggest just connecting it to one computer and then share the drive with the other computer. That way its always avaliable to you no matter which computer you are at.

    Formatting the drive in NTFS can work using MacFUSE http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/, but sometimes its sketching in working so I might try that first and see if the Mac can read and write to it. What I mean by sketchy is that when it works it works, but sometimes you will set it up perfectly but it just doesn't like the external drive or something.
     
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  3. finger11, May 23, 2007

    finger11 macrumors member

    Joined:
    Apr 11, 2007
    #3
    nmals23, the 32 gig limit is a windows imposed limitation not a fat 32 limitation...if you are able to format the drive with another utility other than the one that comes with windows, you won't have the limitation..
     
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