help with external hd

[anamznazn]

i have a small notebook HD that i bought along with an external case for my desktop. instead of using it w/ my desktop, i rather use it (as an external hd of course) w/ my macbook. however, whenever i plug it via USB, the macbook recongizes it under 'about this mac', but it won't show up in finder or the desktop. how can i fix this problem? thanks

(i'm PRETTY sure this has to do with something along the line of fat or ntsc, but i'm unclear how to change those types of settings on the harddrive. it's an 80 gigs HD by the way. )

 

[chasemac]

i have a small notebook HD that i bought along with an external case for my desktop. instead of using it w/ my desktop, i rather use it (as an external hd of course) w/ my macbook. however, whenever i plug it via USB, the macbook recongizes it under 'about this mac', but it won't show up in finder or the desktop. how can i fix this problem? thanks

(i'm PRETTY sure this has to do with something along the line of fat or ntsc, but i'm unclear how to change those types of settings on the harddrive. it's an 80 gigs HD by the way. )

Have you used this HD at all yet? If you have, the fat or ntsc you mention are windows HD formats. It will need to be reformatted for mac.

 

[Xeem]

Does it show up in Disk Utility?

 

[CanadaRAM]

In order to reformat it, open Disk Utility (Applications: Utilities), select the drive icon of this drive (make SURE you are selecting the right one) and choose Erase or Partition. If it is to be used only with the Mac, then choose Macintosh Extended as the formatting method.