how can i use my old MB hd on a PC box?

[j5uh]

I recently upgraded my MB HD 80gig with a new 160gig. I ordered a external casing to use the old hd as a backup.

when it's plugging into my MB it works fine... but when plugged into the PC it' doesn't even recognize it. Do I have to format it some way? or it's just not possible to use on a PC?

 

[mick4394]

You want to format it FAT32, probably. You could go NTFS, but for an external, FAT32 will allow you to use it with your Mac as well.

 

[j5uh]

can i format fat32 through my mb?

 

[hircus]

can i format fat32 through my mb?

Yes, but why don't you just format it on the PC? It should show up under "My Computer", just right-click and format. Otherwise, Control Panel -> Administrator Tools -> Computer Management lets you repartition and format the disk anyway you want.

 

[Eidorian]

You can only format the drive to FAT32 for drives up to 32 GB in Windows.

 

[j5uh]

Yes, but why don't you just format it on the PC? It should show up under "My Computer", just right-click and format. Otherwise, Control Panel -> Administrator Tools -> Computer Management lets you repartition and format the disk anyway you want.

it actually won't detect the drive at all =/

 

[a456]

Format it in Disk Utility on the Mac. Format it as MS-DOS - this will read on Mac and Windows Machines:

"In Disk Utility, select the disk you want to format for Windows computers.
Click Erase and choose MS-DOS File System from the Volume Format pop-up menu.
Type a name for the disk.
The name's maximum length is 11 characters.

Click the Erase button, then click Erase again.
You can also choose to partition a disk using a Windows partition scheme which formats the partitions in MS-DOS format."

 

[LeviG]

Not sure why its not reading in windows, probably the format is os-x orientated. So if it is the formatting you could just get something like macdrive which should read the native os-x formatting

 

[hircus]

Not sure why its not reading in windows, probably the format is os-x orientated.

Ah, silly me. It's the old *internal* hard drive, right? So it would have been using GPT instead of the old-style partition tables. Windows should still detect it as an unpartitioned drive, assuming they do things correctly, which they might not. In which case, yes, format it on the Mac first.

You might want to reformat as NTFS once Windows detects it -- there are third-party free tools to format >32GB as FAT32, but really, why? The 2GB-per-file limit is really annoying, and NTFS is a much better file system (and OS X can still read it anyway)

 

[LeviG]

actually just had a thought, you have got the drive plugged in correctly iirc 2.5" drives use a slightly different connector