I'm a switcher, and enjoying my new MBP. Tonight I used my WD250 external to do a TimeMachine backup. Before I started I copied all my data to my PC computer, because before I can use TimeMachine I needed to reformat the WD250 drive. Anyway after I ran TimeMachine and my Mac backup, I then took the WD250 back to my PC to copy back the data, but it seems my PC doesn't see my WD250 drive anymore. Does that sound right?
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Question about TimeMachine
- Thread starter MagnumJoe
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Windows can only read FAT32 and NTFS formats so I you changed your WD250 HD to say MAC Format obviously Windows will not recognize it anymore. I recommend you use SwissKnife, it allows you to format partitions of up to 2024GB. Try it out. You will then be able to use it across Windows, MAC and Linux 
That's not necessary.
Reformat your drive with a couple of partitions using Disk Utility.
Leave a large chunk of it for Time Machine, formatted as HFS+ (Apple OS X extended journaled).
Format another chunk as FAT32 (Windos/DOS file system).
Your Mac and your PC will both be able to read and write to both partitions, though I don't believe Windows knows how to read Time Machine backups themselves.
Limitation: FAT32 doesn't handle files larger than 4GB. One of the reasons PCs are now using NTFS instead.
Reformat your drive with a couple of partitions using Disk Utility.
Leave a large chunk of it for Time Machine, formatted as HFS+ (Apple OS X extended journaled).
Format another chunk as FAT32 (Windos/DOS file system).
Your Mac and your PC will both be able to read and write to both partitions, though I don't believe Windows knows how to read Time Machine backups themselves.
Limitation: FAT32 doesn't handle files larger than 4GB. One of the reasons PCs are now using NTFS instead.