Formatting one partition on external harddrive

[angeldust33]

Hello everyone,

here's the situation;

I have an external hard drive with two partitions. I made the mistake of connecting mt Ext HDD to a friend's windows computer and since then one of the Partitions (I think Fat32) cannot be read on any of my macs. It used to work flawlessly earlier.

My simple questions is, Can i use disk utility to erase and re-format that partition ?

Basically a lot of space on my HDD is wasted and i want put it to use again without Deleting or formatting the partition that works.

All help will be much much appreciated.
Grazie

p.s. i googled but couldn't find a proper answer.

 

[ValSalva]

FAT32 should be readable on OS X. But as long as the data on the external HDD isn't needed I'd give Disk Utility a try.

There are a ton of tutorials on how to partition hard drives. Just search for that and you should be good to go.

 

[angeldust33]

thanks for your reply.

But once again.

The HDD has 2 partitions

Partition A
Partition B.

Partition A is cool i want to keep the data on it.
PArtition B is the bad one which doesn't show any data.

I want to erase and reformat ONLY partition B so i can put new data on it
while keeping PArtition A as it is.

Is this possible ? and can i use disk utility for this ?

thanks for your help everyone

 

[Weaselboy]

thanks for your reply.

But once again.

The HDD has 2 partitions

Partition A
Partition B.

Partition A is cool i want to keep the data on it.
PArtition B is the bad one which doesn't show any data.

I want to erase and reformat ONLY partition B so i can put new data on it
while keeping PArtition A as it is.

Is this possible ? and can i use disk utility for this ?

thanks for your help everyone

Yes you can. Just start disk util and select partition B then click the minus at the lower left to remove the partition. Then click the plus to add a partition back into the now empty space.

 

[MacUser2525]

Yes you can. Just start disk util and select partition B then click the minus at the lower left to remove the partition. Then click the plus to add a partition back into the now empty space.

Or you can just click the Partition B and select Erase choosing the file system you want on it to do just the reformatting step by itself with no repartitioning.

 

[Weaselboy]

Or you can just click the Partition B and select Erase choosing the file system you want on it to do just the reformatting step by itself with no repartitioning.

I agree that should work, but it seems some users have had trouble doing so when the second partition was created by a Windows machine. I have no idea why.

 

[angeldust33]

Or you can just click the Partition B and select Erase choosing the file system you want on it to do just the reformatting step by itself with no repartitioning.

Did this Worked Flawlessly in 2 seconds.
Thank you much

 

[MacUser2525]

Did this Worked Flawlessly in 2 seconds.
Thank you much

Your welcome.