Time Machine Setup wont detect HD

[tkepongo]

im trying to set up time machine to my external hard drive but the setup doesnt see it. the hard drive icon is right on my desktop. what's going on here?

 

[J@ffa]

Check the format of the external HD in Disk Utility. It's possible it's formatted as a FAT32 or NTFS (Windows, basically) drive if you just got it, or you may not have noticed that it was like that even if you've had it for ages. It should be Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

 

[tkepongo]

okay, it says it is ntfs. how do i make it mac compatible?

 

[joegomolski]

Time Machine Setup wont detect HD

Open up the program Disk Utility, found in the Utility folder.

Select your external HDD, and click on partition. Choose Options,
then select Guid Partition Table, click Ok, then back to the main screen and click on Apply.

Note, if you have any information on your external HDD back it up before partitioning. Any information on the HDD will be erased, in the partitioning of the external HDD.

Viola! and your done.

Before I do anything else, I install Leopard on the external HDD, to have another boot disk in the system.

 

[Raid]

okay, it says it is ntfs. how do i make it mac compatible?

You can reformat the drives using Disk Utility (found under ~/Applications/Utilities) ... make sure there's nothing on it that you want to keep, reformatting the drive will delete all the data.

<edit> Err what joegomolski said</edit>

 

[matthew42]

How to get Time Machine without drive hassle

An interesting alternative to Time Machine:

http://www.crashplan.com/features/timeMachine.vtl

It's has many more features while remaining quite easy to use.