Transferring an external hard drive from a Pc to Mac

Question

Newbie- would like to use my Seagate drive from my old PC as a backup disk, but found I can read but not write to it. Discovered it's format is NTFS. How do I now get this to a MAC writable format. Do I use the Disk Utility to erase the disk? Should I partition it? What are my format choices?

Answer 1

From the Seagate support website (you may want to do your own search there as well for more tips):
1. Open Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility
2. Click on the Partition tab
3. Click on the Current Volume Scheme drop-down menu and select One (1) partition.
4. Click Options. From the Partition Schemes provided:
5. Click on the GUID Partition Table radio button (best for Intel Macs)
-OR-
Click on the Apple Partition Map radio button (best for PowerPC Macs)
6. Click OK. Select other options as desired (e.g., Volume Name, Format, etc.).
7. Click Apply. The Partition Disk screen opens.
8. Click Partition. At this point, the volume dismounts from the desktop and the drive is partitioned and formatted.
Note: When Volumes are created, Time Machine may open asking if you would like to use the volume for backups. Click Cancel to proceed. (if you don't want to use the drive for Time Machine)
When finished, select the Disk Utility from the Apple Menu and choose Quit Disk Utility
(I recently used this process to change a FreeAgent Desk drive from NTFS to GUID without any problems)