I have a question about an external harddrive

[tluna3]

i just purchased and macbook. i have also purchased a lacie 250 gb firewire external harddrive. i made it into 2 partitions. i can see it on my macbook, but when i take it to my pc it isnt recognized. im trying to run it on both mac and pc. i use my pc for downloading, but i want to transfer it to my mac. can anyone help me. ive used the disk utility to partition but i still cant get the harddrive to be recognized on my pc

 

[Big-TDI-Guy]

What format are you using? HFS+ / FAT32 or NTFS?

 

[heatmiser]

You need to format it to Fat32 so both Windows and OS X can read/write the drive.

 

[tluna3]

can i format it to fat32 on the mac?

 

[Big-TDI-Guy]

You need to format it to Fat32 so both Windows and OS X can read/write the drive.

That - or get a program that allows windows to read/write HFS - or a program that allows OSX to read/write NTFS.

My only beef with Fat32 is performance with my drive. (WD external) But that could just be unique to my system / setup.

Yes, disk utility will let you format for FAT 32. Just be aware that you will need to backup whatever is on the drive currently before doing this.

 

[tluna3]

well there is nothing on my external at this point.

can someone give me instructions how to format this drive to fat32?

i cant seem to figure this thing out.

 

[heatmiser]

well there is nothing on my external at this point.

can someone give me instructions how to format this drive to fat32?

i cant seem to figure this thing out.

On OS X...

Disk Utility->Erase->MS DOS option. As BTG said, be sure to back up your data first. There are 3rd party apps (MacDrive) that'll enable Windows to read HFS, but they aren't free...

 

[Big-TDI-Guy]

Go to spotlight (top right corner of your screen) and type in "Disk Utility"

Launch the app.

Select your external drive on the left, and click the "erase" tab. Under volume format - select FAT 32 - name it, and click "go".

Dishes done.

 

[tluna3]

im new to macs so any info on formating this to fat32 would be awesome

 

[tluna3]

ok under volume it doesnt say fat32.

is ms-dos(fat) the same thing?

ive tried it and i dont think it works.

 

[rdowns]

Yes, choose MS-DOS.

It doesn't take very long. Copy a file to the drive and connect to your Windows box to see it it took the format.

 

[tluna3]

alright im gonna go see if it recognizes the hard drive on my pc

 

[Big-TDI-Guy]

Here.

 

[tluna3]

Alright guys I have finally got it working for me!

I appreciate all the info.

 

[Big-TDI-Guy]

Just remember. Search Forums is your friend.

Welcome.