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Partitioning an external HD for Mac and Win use

S

scvkurt03

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 11, 2010
19
0
So I just got my brand new MBP 15" and bought myself an OWC 2TB external to go along with it. I want to partition the drive 1.2tb for Win and the rest for backing up my MBP. I read up and partitioned both as NTFS in Windows with the understanding that I'd be able to reformat one of them in Disk Utility on the Mac. My Mac doesn't recognize either partition, though the drive will mount just fine - it just won't read a thing about it, other than size and branding.

Is it possible to do what I'm trying to do?
 
and use the FAT32 drive as the windows partition or the mac partition? what do with the NTFS partition?
 
scvkurt03 said:
and use the FAT32 drive as the windows partition or the mac partition? what do with the NTFS partition?
Click to expand...

NTFS for Windows, HFS+ for OS X. Disk Utility can read FAT32 fine so if you format the other partition as FAT32, you should be able to format it as HFS+ in DU.
 
simsaladimbamba said:
You can use Disk Utility to properly format and partition the HDD for use with Mac OS X and Windows.
Use the "MBR - Master Boot Record" partition scheme under OPTIONS in the Partition tab.
You also need MacFuse and NTFS-3G to use the NTFS format in Disk Utility.

Format Your Hard Drive Using Disk Utility
Partition Your Hard Drive With Disk Utility
Click to expand...

Thanks - so very helpful. However, I already have about 1tb of stuff on the one of the partitions I created in Windows. Any way to save that data?
 
Hellhammer said:
NTFS for Windows, HFS+ for OS X. Disk Utility can read FAT32 fine so if you format the other partition as FAT32, you should be able to format it as HFS+ in DU.
Click to expand...


That makes sense, but that the Mac isn't reading either NTFS partition currently.
 
Why not use xFat? It is essentially Fat64 and is read/write compatible with Mac and Windows 7.
 
sjfwhite said:
Why not use xFat? It is essentially Fat64 and is read/write compatible with Mac and Windows 7.
Click to expand...

I don't know. Why not? Anyone?

Also, is HFS+ the same as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)"? I'm not sure how to format using HFS+...
 
scvkurt03 said:
So I just got my brand new MBP 15" and bought myself an OWC 2TB external to go along with it. I want to partition the drive 1.2tb for Win and the rest for backing up my MBP. I read up and partitioned both as NTFS in Windows with the understanding that I'd be able to reformat one of them in Disk Utility on the Mac. My Mac doesn't recognize either partition, though the drive will mount just fine - it just won't read a thing about it, other than size and branding.

Is it possible to do what I'm trying to do?
Click to expand...


I don't understand. The Apple Web site says that OSX is "The World's Most Sophisticated Operating System."

Yet Ubuntu can read and write to an NTFS formatted drive without doing anything special.
--
 
DVD9 said:
I don't understand. The Apple Web site says that OSX is "The World's Most Sophisticated Operating System."

Yet Ubuntu can read and write to an NTFS formatted drive without doing anything special.
--
Click to expand...

Maybe Ubuntu comes with MacFuse and NTFS drivers for write support?
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WriteSupportForNTFS

Btw, Mac OS X can at least natively read NTFS formatted volumes, something Windows can't even do with HFS(+) formatted volumes.
 
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