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Volume Format Question

M

marknicholls

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 7, 2004
415
0
Bristol, England
Hey Guys

I have just switched from a PC to a Mac and have a quick question to ask regarding my backup drive:

Which volume format should i use on my external iomega peerless firewire 20gb drive?

Thanks
 
if you want to be able to use it with windows, choose "MS-DOS" which is really FAT32... if you want the most support hook it up with Mac OS Extended... should be the default.. and i believe it's called HFS...

reality
 
the only reason i ask is that i just did my first backup and it was still formatted using NTFS, and when i tried to copy my files to the drive, my address book name was to long (and this was the name that mac os gave it by default) and there was a microsoft entouage file that was to long (or had an invalid charachter) and neither would copy. It got me thinking, would it be better to us a Mac volume, and would the Mac volume support these files in there native name?

(hope that gibberish makes sense)

Mark
 
I formatted mine as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I don't know if "Journaled" makes a difference, but mine works perfectly.

JOD8FY
 
Hey

Also, which option do i choose? Zero All Data? or 8 way random write format? whats the difference??

I was thinking of partitioning my HDD on my mac, to leave a partition for OS and programs, and a partition for my home (my docs etc) how would i do this on a mac? i have looked in the disc utlity program, and i cant partition the HDD.....in windows i would partition the HDD and drag the my documents folder over......how do i do this on a mac?


Thanks Guys
 
marknicholls said:
can anyone shed any light on the differnce between Journaled and not Journaled? i really dont know what to use on my backup cartridge
Click to expand...
Journaled mode is a form of protection for the drive. Basically, the journal keeps a log of all changes to the drive, and if something goes wrong, the journal is used to revert the drive to a known good state. I recommend enabling journaling for Mac OS backup volumes.
marknicholls said:
Hey

Also, which option do i choose? Zero All Data? or 8 way random write format? whats the difference??

I was thinking of partitioning my HDD on my mac, to leave a partition for OS and programs, and a partition for my home (my docs etc) how would i do this on a mac? i have looked in the disc utlity program, and i cant partition the HDD.....in windows i would partition the HDD and drag the my documents folder over......how do i do this on a mac?


Thanks Guys
Click to expand...
You don't need to choose either option unless you want to make sure all traces of the old data are gone after the format, and you're prepared to wait several hours for the format to complete.

To partition a Mac OS disk, open Disk Utility, select the disk you want partitioned (the disk is the thing that starts "(capacity)(manufacturer)", for example "100 GB Maxtor"; as opposed to the volume(s), each of which has a name like "Macintosh HD"), and click the Partition tab. The Partition tab won't appear if you select a volume instead of a disk. Once you've got the Partition tab open, select the partitioning scheme you want, then click Partition. WARNING: This will format the disk, erasing all data. Make sure you have anything you want saved backed up before partitioning.
 
marknicholls said:
why is MS-DOS file system the default volume format on the disc utility program??
Click to expand...
It isn't normally the default unless the disk was previously formatted either with Windows or using that option on the Mac. Since you mentioned that the drive had a Windows format beforehand, that explains why MS-DOS format is selected - Mac OS X assumes you just want to wipe the disk, rather than change the format. It'll do the same thing for an HFS disk - you have to select MS-DOS format yourself if you want to change it.
 
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