Mac formatted External HD not detecting by Windows

[BuddyMac]

Hi,

I recently bought a 250 GB external hard disk and I copied some files from a PC to it.

When I connected that hard disk to my macbook, Time Machine activated and asked me wether it can be use that HD for time machine's backup. I said YES and then it formatted the disk (no probs). Then it is taking my entire system's backup (approx 90 GB) into it. Then I stopped it because I don't want to fill my HD with those entire system files and etc. So, I copied some specic files into it.

Now when I connect it to a PC (Windows Xp), it is not detecting my HD.

Please help me in this... otherwise my purpose buying external HD will go vain 🙁

Thanks in acvance,

 

[samh004]

When it formatted your drive, the files that you copied onto it from XP originally were over written.

To use it with Time Machine, it had to be formatted as HFS+, unfortunately you can't read HFS+ formatted disks on XP easily, however you can buy a utility to read the disk, but it'll cost you.

Additionally, you can exclude certain files from within Time Machine preferences from being backed up, thus saving space so your not using so much.

 

[BuddyMac]

yeah... I just gone through some sites and cam to know that Windows will not recognie HFS+ format. So now I wanted to re-format my disk with FAT32. Can you please tell me how to do it in Mac?

I don't want to use Time Machine now (atleast with this particular disk)

When it formatted your drive, the files that you copied onto it from XP originally were over written.

To use it with Time Machine, it had to be formatted as HFS+, unfortunately you can't read HFS+ formatted disks on XP easily, however you can buy a utility to read the disk, but it'll cost you.

Additionally, you can exclude certain files from within Time Machine preferences from being backed up, thus saving space so your not using so much.

 

[samh004]

Open Disk Utility, located in the Utilities folder which is inside the Applications folder.

Select the external drive and look under the "Erase" tab. Choose FAT as your Volume Format and then click Erase. You can also choose to zero out the drive if you want to securely remove data. Just wait for it to complete, shouldn't take long at all. If Time Machine opens a dialog asking if you want to use the disc, say no.

 

[BuddyMac]

Waaaw!! I formatted it with FAT option as u mentioned below. It is workign fine now. Thanks a lot for the guidence 🙂

Open Disk Utility, located in the Utilities folder which is inside the Applications folder.

Select the external drive and look under the "Erase" tab. Choose FAT as your Volume Format and then click Erase. You can also choose to zero out the drive if you want to securely remove data. Just wait for it to complete, shouldn't take long at all. If Time Machine opens a dialog asking if you want to use the disc, say no.

 

[theman]

I don't know how much space you need, but you could Partition the drive and have 1 partition in FAT (to use in windows and OS X) and the other in HFS+ to use for Time Machine if you want. That way you don't need a second drive. However, you may need all those 250gb for both of those 2 things, i don't know.