Reformat External HDD

[standingquiet]

I have a 320gb External Hard drive that i used as my time machine. I now have a 1TB one some my wife is going to have my old one for her PC.

Its currently formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) would i have to reformatted to MS-DOS (FAT) for it to work with PC?


Cheers

Matt

 

[DewGuy1999]

Windows can not natively read a Mac formatted hard drive. To be used with Windows (without using third party software) the hard drive needs to be formatted for either MS-DOS (FAT) or NTFS. You can format it as MS-DOS (FAT) on a Mac with Disk Utility but not as NTFS. To format it as NTFS on a Mac you would need third party software as OS X can only natively read NTFS not write to it. You should be able to format it as NTFS using Windows. Here's a MacRumors post that explains the difference between MS-DOS (FAT) and NTFS.

 

[blueroom]

ExFAT plays nice with recent versions of Windows & OSX

 

[standingquiet]

Thanks guys i done it as MS-DOS (FAT) she'll hardly use it anyway knowing her

 

[blueroom]

MS DOS is a relic and has file size limitations. You really want FAT32 or ExFAT (better)