i just recently changed from using windows to mac osx. I have a external hard drive with a lot of different movies on it. When i plug this into my macbook it doesnt recognize it, when i go into disk utility it shows up but i cant do anything to it except delete everything on there. But whenever i plug this into my PC it reads it right away and i am able to access all the files on it. Help me please!!!
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
HELP external Hard Drive Issues
- Thread starter Cun0144
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
could be that the drive is formatted for PC only. not sure about this, but i'd save all the data on the drive so far, like on your PC or something, and then erase the drive (and formatting). then, plug it into your mac and it should format the drive to work on a mac instead of a PC. i'm not sure you can go both ways (mac & pc) with any external drive of any size, though. 
What version of MacOS X are you using? I remember this being a problem in 10.3, but not 10.4, although I could be wrong....
Correct me if I am wrong but OS X does not work with PC's NTFS file format. It does work with Fat 32. So if you want the drive to work with both PC and MAC then save the data on another drive and reformate FAT 32, then you should be all good.
DW
DW
You're wrong.
OS X can read, but not write to, NTFS drives. It an read and write to FAT32 drives.
Is this drive bus-powered or does it have an external drive?
You're wrong.
OS X can read, but not write to, NTFS drives. It an read and write to FAT32 drives.
Is this drive bus-powered or does it have an external drive?
The only downside to FAT32 is it won't write any file over 4GB, so if it is movies be careful they aren't over 4GB.
I have definately experienced this problem before. For some reason the Mac will not recognize the NTFS volume no matter what... And it would happen a lot. Occasionally it would happen with FAT32 partitions as well, but rarely. I have never found an adequate solution.
Instead, I went the other way. I made the external HD a Mac HFS+ volume and installed MacDrive on the PC so that it reads Mac volumes. This is how I've been doing it and it's been working great.
The only other thing I can suggest is to network the PC and MacBook and, connect the hard drive to the PC and share it.
Instead, I went the other way. I made the external HD a Mac HFS+ volume and installed MacDrive on the PC so that it reads Mac volumes. This is how I've been doing it and it's been working great.
The only other thing I can suggest is to network the PC and MacBook and, connect the hard drive to the PC and share it.
I'm storing 60gb + files on a FAT32 drive, I think it's FAT16 which has this limit. FAT32 is MUCH higher if I remember correctly.
OS X can recognise NTFS and FAT32 drives, the two most common PC formats, although it can only read to NTFS, not write to it.
I understand what it should do. The problem is that the Mac isn't doing it. Sometimes it works and most times it doesn't.
You guys are all wrong!
Mac CAN read and write NTFS volumes with MacFuse and NTFS-3G. See sig for link or just google.
You won't set any land speed records however using NTFS-3G
*use at your own risk*
Mac CAN read and write NTFS volumes with MacFuse and NTFS-3G. See sig for link or just google.
You won't set any land speed records however using NTFS-3G
*use at your own risk*
You guys are all wrong!
Mac CAN read and write NTFS volumes with MacFuse and NTFS-3G. See sig for link or just google.
You won't set any land speed records however using NTFS-3G
*use at your own risk*
tried this. If you want your computer to take 30 seconds to shut down, use it. Copying large files to NTFS is impossible because (1) it takes sooo long, (2) if it gets done, the file is corrupted. I see it only useful for documents or files of that size.
I couldnt take the shut down times. That was the main reason i uninstalled it.
my solution to this problem was having an external drive with 3 partitions. one was for OS X to use, one was for XP to use, and one was FAT32 so both can read and write...kinda like a liason between them.
The total size of FAT32 drives can be much larger than 4GB, but it cannot handle any file bigger than 4GB.
However, Windows XP adds an artificial limit of 32GB if you try to format any drive in FAT32 format via Windows built-in utilities. Thus, if you want to format your 320GB drive in FAT32, you'll need 10 partitions. The only way to avoid this problem is to use additional software such as PartitionMagic on top of Windows.
So I just got a 500 gig external USB Western Digital Drive today solely to be able to store shared files between my mac and pc's on my network, and also to be host to my 50 gigabyte Itunes library.
How should I format it to best use?? Multiple Fat-32 partitions would drive me nuts!
How should I format it to best use?? Multiple Fat-32 partitions would drive me nuts!