Formatting (or not formatting) external hard drives

[YS2003]

I heard formatting an external hard drive (with USB 1, 2, or Firewire 400 or 800) with Mac OX Extneded is good as long as you are only using that external HD for a Mac. But, is it necessary or recommended to do formatting as you can also use those external hard drives (maxtor, acomdata, and others) without formatting right out of the box. Does it lead to the file corruption if you use it without formatting.

 

[MacDawg]

I heard formatting an external hard drive (with USB 1, 2, or Firewire 400 or 800) with Mac OX Extneded is good as long as you are only using that external HD for a Mac. But, is it necessary or recommended to do formatting as you can also use those external hard drives (maxtor, acomdata, and others) without formatting right out of the box. Does it lead to the file corruption if you use it without formatting.

My 250GB LaCie recommended not reformatting unless there was a specific reason to do so, like partioning, etc. I used it right out of the box with no problems. Plug and play.

Woof, Woof - Dawg

 

[jsw]

Same here. If it works, you don't need to reformat it! Sometimes, with older drives, you might reformat them just to clean them up, but there's no reason to do so on a new drive.