External Drive Format - Mac Extended vs Fat32

Hi
There seems to be a general consensus that if you are saving iMovie projects to an external hard disk, the format must be Mac Extended (Journaled).
There is an Apple support article from July 2003 saying that this is the case.
However I have experimented, testing an imovie 6 project saved on both a Mac Extended partition and a Fat32 partition on my external drive.
Both appear to run perfectly.
Does anyone know whether the article / idea that iMovie needs Mac Extended format is out of date? Has subsequent releases of iMovie fixed the issue with using Fat32?
Any experiences/thoughts anyone? I'd ideally prefer to keep my external as all Fat32 seeing as I want to swap files with my PC.....

Why not partition the drive, one partition Mac OS Extended, one partition Fat32, as suggested in another thread?
BTW, I wouldn't rely on your experience storing an iMovie project on a Fat32 drive to prove much of anything. If Apple says not to use it, I wouldn't use it. There's no way any one of us can test all the conditions that can and will arrise.
One such condition, if memory serves, is that large clips — longer than 20 minutes — do not import correctly with Fat32. Something about a 4GB limit, if I recall. Users have reported other problems too. A search for "Fat32" in the iMovie forums should reveal several.
Karl

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Format External Drive Partitioned OSX extended and FAT32

I am new to the concept of partitioning a drive and have found information mentioning that disk utility has a MS-DOS option for partitioning a drive. I do not have this as a drop down choice in my Disk Utility options. I have read that this is format equivalent to FAT32. I would like to partition this drive half OSX extended and half FAT32. How do I get the drop down choice and is this possible.
PowerBook G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Thank you Limnos for all your help. Last night I tried again and it worked! I’ not totally sure on what I did right but:
• Both volumes on the new ext. driver were HFS (from my last attempt the other day) so I looked into a simple erase of one partition/volume into a different format, but DU did not offer a way of erasing it into MS-DOS(FAT32). But I think I did a simple HFS erase anyway of the volume I wanted to format to FAT32. There was nothing “in” that volume because this was a new external drive but I figured it could not hurt anything.
• So then, I think I went back to Partition, locked the partition/volume that I wanted to keep in HFS+ for my Mac files, and (re)partitioned the other just erased volume to MS-DOS. I think I did it under the MBR option.
• It worked! Not sure why but my Mac recognized both volumes one as HFS, the other as FAT32. Maybe someone will find this useful some day!!
• Then, I hooked up the drive to my work Dell, the Dell found only the FAT32 drive (as expected), and I executed a short simple easy command I found on ehow.com (search for ‘convert FAT32 to NTFS’) to make that volume NTFS.
Thanks again Limnos and everyone else!

External drive format to be used as iTunes library and media folder

Hi everyone, I want to transffer my iTunes to an external drive, do I need to format my external drive to Extended Journal or will an Appleshare be alright? Thanks!

Thanks for the reply, good! I only asked because I read that if you transfer you iPhoto Library you need to have your external drive formatted to Extended Journal so I thought that it might be the same for iTunes. And I only read the post after I started to transfer the iTunes to an external drive. Thanks again!

Formatted External drive for Mac OS extended

Hi,
I actually change from windows to Mac (no comparison...!!) but trying to transfer my photos (Pictures in finder) to an external hard disk i can`t drag and drop and i do not know why....i read in one forume that i have to formatted the external drive for Mac OS extended. First question: how could i do that? if my hard disk was originally formatted for windows, do i lose the info when i formatted?
Thanks!!

You will lose the files on the HD when you reformat it. So copy what you want off the drive to a folder on your Mac temporarily.
select the HD on the Desktop and launch Disk Utility.
select the HD in the left hand page of DU.
click on the Partiton button
select 1 Partition
select OS X Extended (journaled) in the drop down Format menu.
click on the Apply button
drag the folder of files onto the EHD to copy back and then delete from your Mac's drive after verifying that they all copied back successfully.
OT

Is it safe to format ANY external drive to Mac OS Extended?

Some Seagate tech told me a while back that Seagate drives should ONLY be formatted with their proprietary formatting and that my data is vulnerable if I use something else. (I may have misunderstood this, but I'm 98% certain that's what he said.) I do remember him saying not to use the Mac's Disk Utility to format the drive.
I want to reformat this drive so that it's 100% compatible with my new Mavericks iMac.
Is there any concern about formatting ANY external drive to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Or are there some hard drives that should not be formatted to Mac using Disk Utility?
I'm under the impression that all external drives are basically the same and I can format them however I want. No drive is "made" to be formatted with a certain OS or a certain format.
Is that correct?

Formatting a drive simply will remove any data currently stored on it. There is no such thing as "proprietary formatting." Drives come out of the factory with no formatting.
Whatever the person told you it was patently wrong not to mention mis-informed.
To use a hard drive properly with any computer it needs to be formatted with the tool that is required for the operating system with which it will be used. For the Mac you use Disk Utility (the tool) and you format the drive using Mac OS Extended, Journaled (the format.)
Your impression is correct.

Partitioning a MyBook to use with fcp... can it be Mac Extended and FAT32?

Hi, I'm a film student and a little while ago I just bought a MyBook 1T external hard drive (USB only).
I'm looking into reformatting my hard drive because when capturing with fcp (straight to the hard drive) I keep getting an error at around 9 minutes.
I did some research and found out that its because its formatted to FAT32 instead of Mac Extended.
However, I do a lot of work with PC's and transferring files on my hard drive and I read that once formatted to Mac Extended my hard drive would not work on a PC.
I was wondering if I partitioned my MyBook would I be able to make one part Mac Extended (for my capture scratch files) and one part FAT32 (that I could use like a regular hard drive for files between Mac and PC)?
Also just to be clear once the hard drive is Mac Extended I can still keep other files besides capture scratch files in that portion of the hard drive, it's just I can't transfer those particular files to PC. (Some of the website forums I read made me more confused haha)
Any help would be greatly appreciated,
Kyle

@ nick would that let me capture my footage to my hard drive without having to babysit
NTFS does not have the file size limit silliness that FAT has so you should be OK in theory.
Run a couple of test captures and see what you think.
USB is generally not a good interface for video as it delivers data in bursts. You need a constant stream as provided by FireWire or SATA drives. If you are working with low bandwidth video codecs such as DV, you might get away with it for a while.

Reformat external drive from mac os to windows

the windows partition on my mac book pro is close to full.
i would like to use an external drive formatted for windows for my growing number of pc games (gw,tdu,fsx,dirt - which run great on the mac book pro windows partition btw).
i tried to reformat a mac formatted external drive using disc utility, erase, format volume, but only choices were mac os extended and unix - no fat32, dos, or windows choices.
if i start up my mac book pro using windows, the drive does not show up in the 'hard drives' section of 'my computer'
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Hi Stefan, Turns out my old ext hd was corrupt. Bought a new 300G G-Drive and got a brand new problem which you may have heard of - the dreaded hal.dll crash. My windows partition crashed and after much effort I finally have everything working.
Had to go to the mac store to get a boot camp 1.4 disk (mine was the original) was able to save files from the corrupt windows partition to my mac partition. next i used boot camp to revert to a single partition on my internal drive, saving my mac system and files. next used boot camp to partition the internal drive into big mac and 31G windows. reinstalled windows. next using disk utility i split my 300G external into 10 30G partitions using your GUID suggestion and formatting in ms-dos(fat32) so my mac could read/write to it. dragged the files i saved to the 30G partitions and they work fine. loaded more games into the 30G partitions and they also are working fine.
could not have done it without your pointing out the GUID option.
vielen dank, john

Music Server Can't See External Drive Formatted for WIN with Disk Utility.

Is there any reason an external drive formatted for WIN (MS-DOS(FAT)/FAT32 or NTFS w/ NTFS-3G/MacFUSE) with Disk Utility would not work for intended purpose? I have a music server (Bryston BDP-1) that uses an attached USB drive for storage/playback of music and can only read FAT32 or NTFS formatted drives. I've tried both and neither is readable by the BDP-1, yet I have no problem reading/writing to the supplied 2GB Thumb Drive (FAT32), as well as another 2GB Thumb Drive (FAT32). Get Info shows; "FAT32" for all drives formatted as such.
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I do have Fusion/XP, also access to WIN PC's, but I just hate to use it when I shouldn't have to. It makes no sense why the drive can't be read by the BDP-1 when formatted for WIN under OS X.
And there was one other issue, after the third try to format fro WIN the external drive suddenly began making faint clicking sounds instead of a spinning drive sound only when plugged into BDP-1 USB port. But it works fine when connected to iMac FW.
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Exchanged drive. Works now.

Is it OK to use USB 2.0 connection for Glyph external drive and Mac Pro as project drive?

Is it OK to use a USB 2.0 connection for Glyph external drive and Mac Pro as project drive? I was told by Sweetwater tech support to use Firewire, but both the FW400 and FW800 connections crash my audio interface software mixer (Presonus' "Universal Control" software).
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If you have a mac pro, why not stick the external HDD inside via one of your many SATA cables & have it run 9 times faster than your USB?
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DVD or CD sharing: Using Remote Disc - Apple Support

Unable to format external drive as Mac OS Extended

I just bought a WD 3TB My Book Essential external hard drive so I can free-up space on my Mac Mini. When I used Disk Utility to erase the data and reformat the drive as Mac OS Extended, I got the following error:
+Disk Insertion+
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Not sure what the problem was on the MacMini (10.5.8), but I just managed to format the disk on my MacBook Pro (10.6.4).
Problem solved!

Back up failed to external drive (formatted to MAC OS Extended)

I have recently bought an external drive, have used disk utility to format it to MAC OS Extended (journaled).
I have then used Time Capsule to complete a back up, but it fails every time I try.
The error message says" The backup was not performed because an error occurred while copying files to the back up disk"
I have then tried to repair the disk and it says the drive appears to be fine.
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Plrase help.

Hi there Shainj,
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Time Machine: Troubleshooting backup issues
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3275
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How to format external drive to MAC OS Extended w/ MBR scheme?

Hello all,
I have a Maxtor 1TB drive that I would like to format to MAC OS Extended (Journaled) but also using a Master Boot Record partition map scheme.
Every time I try using the Disk Utility, I get a partition error. It will only let me partition using a GUID scheme, however the XBox360 that I also connect my drive to requires a MBR scheme.
I have another another Maxtor drive formatted in this manor, so I can't quite understand why I keep receiving this error!
Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks
Message was edited by: Gio_vanni

Not doable. AFAIK, your choices are APM, GPT, and MBR. Additionally, HFS+ isn't available for windoze's MBR; only MS-DOS or FAT-32.

How to format an external drive for mac AND pc use

i want to format my external drive so i can use it on my mac and on pc's as well. i've gathered that the MS-DOS format is the way to go. my question is this: would this create any problems for my mac then?
can i partion one part for ms-dos and part for macos extended?
cheers
-j-

MS-DOS format (or FAT32) will be fine for both Mac and PC. However there is a 4GB file size limit with FAT32.
You could use a dual partition, however the HFS+ partition would not be readable by the PC unless you installed the third party MacDrive.
Look at this page for more information on a dual partition drive for Mac and Windows.
http://macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030613121738812
iFelix

How to format external drive for mac AND pc use

hi
i want to format my external drive so i can use it on my mac and on pc's as well. i've gathered that the MS-DOS format is the way to go. my question is this: would this create any problems for my mac then?
can i partion one part for ms-dos and part for macos extended?
cheers
-j-

There are a couple of disadvantages with formatting a
disk as FAT32. Firstly, there is a limit on the file
size for FAT32. I think it like 2 GB so if you
capturing video the results will probably not fit
into this file limit. Secondly FAT32 will not be
bootable. I alway clone my system to a backup disk as
bootable. That way if anything goes wrong with my
system, I can just boot from my backup disk and fix
it.
The problem with doing this though is that the drive will not be usable with Windows (which was in the original posting) unless you use the third party MacDrive software on the PC.
iFelix

External Drive Format - Mac Extended vs Fat32

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