This might be a dumb questions but im new and im just trying to figure out all about macbooks and the os. I bought a hard drive not knowing windows was installed on it and since my battery on my macbook is dead and the charger is being shipped i was wondering if i hook the hard drive up to my pc as a external hard drive can i format it for a mac and possibly install the os on it from my pc cd drive? Any help would be great. My pc is running windows 7 if that means anything.
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I'm new to Mac so I'm sorry.
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Windows doesn't recognize the Mac filesystem, or run Mac executables, and Mac install disks won't boot on a Windows computer.
As stated, Windows won't be able to convert your hard drive to Mac OS format. However you can use your Windows computer to erase the hard drive that way when your Mac is ready to use then you can just plug it in and convert it to Mac OS format without any problems.
Ok thank you for the quick replies. Ill just erase it and when my charger gets here finish it up. Again sorry for the crazy questions.
What exactly are your goals? There are a few filesystems that the Macintosh can read that Windows 7 can create. It can read and write ExFAT, and FAT32, and can read NTFS.
ExFAT would be the most universal option if you just need to share the drive to transfer files between the two machines.
I got a macbook pro A1211 used and the guy took the hard drive out so i got a new one not knowing windows was installed on it. My charger was bad so i got a new one coming and the battery is dead so i just wanted to set it up. I got os x snow leapord to go in it.
In that case - the best way to do that would be to wait until the charger arrives and then just install it from there.
Just as a note: Take the advice about about external drives. If you're wanting to share information from the Macbook and the PC - using an external drive - rather just format the drive as ExFAT - that way both machines can read / write to the drive.
Alternatively, there is a program called NTFS for Mac by Paragons i think? Which does as it says - will allow the Mac to write to an NTFS drive - which Windows supports 100%
Leave the drive as it is, when you get the mac, format and install it all then through the setup. There is no benefit from doing it prior to receiving everything as you'll format it into a Windows file system to only have to go and format it again for mac.
I can appreciate you're eager to play about, but on this one it's best to just wait and do it all in 1 go.
I can appreciate you're eager to play about, but on this one it's best to just wait and do it all in 1 go.
FWIW, it's pretty easy to format a Windows NTFS drive for later use with a Mac.
It's difficult to take an OS X HFS+ formatted drive and later use it in as a boot drive in a Windows machine. Even though Windows can reformat the drive to NTFS it will not load Windows for some reason.
I had to burn a Linux distro and use it to format the formerly Mountain Lion drive to FAT before Windows would be able to use it as a boot drive. Weird.
It's difficult to take an OS X HFS+ formatted drive and later use it in as a boot drive in a Windows machine. Even though Windows can reformat the drive to NTFS it will not load Windows for some reason.
I had to burn a Linux distro and use it to format the formerly Mountain Lion drive to FAT before Windows would be able to use it as a boot drive. Weird.
Thank all of yall for the help! I posted this question on the apple website in their forum and not one reply! Seems like all the good people are here. Again thank you for the help.
I'm not actually on the Apple forums to comment, but I tend to find all the unofficial forums have more approachable, knowledgeable people. Anyway, let us know how you get on, cos we're also nosey
You may want to get the restore disks directly from Apple as they will be guaranteed to work with your model, and will also come with iLife that it originally came with. Should not cost much to do this.
Thanks
Ah ok. Didnt know about that. I thought i could just install the new os. I will look into that. Thanks you.
You CAN just install the new OS. When you boot into the Snow Leopard installer, first thing you should do is go to Disk Utility in the Utilities menu and format the hard drive. Then close Disk Utility and install as normal. No issues.
I'm at work but just checked USPS and my charger has been delivered. I'm gonna try what y'all told me to do just wanna thank y'all for all the help. I'll will let y'all know if I'm successful or not.
Ok I got it to come up but all I get is the hard drive as a option to boot from and I have OS X 10.6 in the SuperDrive. I can eject the disk an put it back in and you hear it running but it will not give me the option to boot from it.
I have another question can I put the OS X 10.6 into my PC and make a copy of it onto a thumb drive and see if it will boot from the USB drive?
No- a PC will not support the file systems correctly.
In regards to your boot from SuperDrive issue, check and see if a Windows XP or later disc will show up as a boot option. You can insert the disc while it is still on the boot picker and it will refresh automatically. It should show an optical disc labeled simply "Windows" if you have a disk in. If it does not do this, it sounds like perhaps the SuperDrive is experiencing issues. If this is the case you can easily use a USB 2.0 DVD drive to install Snow Leopard.