Format External Drive with 2 partitions (NTFS & Mac OS Extended)

I have a 300GB external hard drive. I need to format it into 2 partitions so I can backup my PC and my Powerbook.
I need two partitions:
1 x Mac OS Extended 75GB
1 x NTFS 225GB
Does anyone know how to do this (possibly with 3rd party software)?
I have Partition Magic on the PC.
Thanks.
17" Powerbook G4 1.67 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.5)

greg:
I think you are more likely to get help if you post your topic in the hardware forum for the 17" G4 PB.
Good luck.
cornelius
PismoG4 550, 100GB 5400 Toshiba internal, 1 GB RAM; Pismo 500 OS (10.4.4) Mac OS X (10.4.5) Beige G3 OS 8.6

Similar Messages

Lion 10.7.4 on an external drive with 2 partitions

I have an external drive with 2 partitions one of which is used for Time Machine Backups. The other is 300 gigs and I want to install lion on it for study but the installer will not let me do that. It might be because of the larger partition that I use for Time machine but I don't see why as it is a separate volume on the same drive. I keep getting the not able to install the recovery HD message. I also made sure to erase and reformat the drive (journaled extended). Any ideas why I can't do this?

Hey Kap
Tried to shrink the volume by 2 gigs but I get a partition failed error: This operation requires a newer version of Mac OS X for this disk. I am running 10.6.8 on my cpu and the partition is empty as I erased it. also it is extended (journaled). I don't understand this message. wierd.

Problems formatting external drive with Disk Utility

Hi all
I'm having some odd troubles with using Disk Utility to format an external hard drive. For some reason, it is giving me all sorts of errors and problems.
Currently, it will let me format the drive in MS-FAT, but won't let me copy certain files to it (it gives an error code). I'm currently trying to re-format the drive in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) but the status bar give me the following error and continues to do its 'pondering' instead of giving me a progress bar:
!http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/5019/picture2csm.png!
It is currently sitting like that, not doing anything (not even going unresponsive).
What am I doing wrong here?
Cheers.

Wait, scratch that, it suddenly started working again.
For some reason, I had to partition it, with one partition a Mac OS partition and the other an MS-DOS FAT... hey ho, no idea.

Format External Drive with Disk Utility, Make it Windows Compatible

I have formatted my external drive using disk utility, and it works great on my Mac. But no Windows PC can read it, and I need to use it on Windows PCs. I tried formatting as MS-DOS FAT but that didn't work either. What can I do?
Thanks so much in advance.

I've run into the problem fairly regularly were I format a drive as FAT32 on the Mac, but Windows won't read it. I just reformat it from the Windows machine as FAT32. My Mac always reads and writes to it just fine, so it has never been a problem, just a minor mystery.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

How can I back up to an external drive with three partitions using Time Machine?

I have an external drive connected to my MBPro. The external drive has three partitions: one dedicated to the MBPro, one dedicated to my iMac and one for Photos. How can I be sure that when I backup my MBPro, it does so to the dedciated partition?
Also, I eject each of the partition icons on my desktop through the Eject selection in Finder menu and then I turn off the external drive and disconnect it. However, when I connect and turn the external drive to start it up again, the a message comes up that it has not been ejected properly. How am I supposed to eject the partitions and drive?
Thanks for you helpl
Vernon

When you set up time machine you should select which partition to backup to, after that it should be automatic, mine is.
I have not encountered your second problem, after ejecting the disks do you immeadiatley switch the drives off or leave them for 10-15 seconds to let them write the info stored on the disk drives internal buffer to disk?
I usually use the CNTL Click on the drive and select eject, but that should not be any different than using the Finder menu.

Formatting external drive for read/write PC/Mac & files greater than 4GB

I'm on Snow Leopard and deliver an external drive off-site to a video editor who needs to read/write to the drive and return the edited files and then I need to read/write all over again. All video files are greater than 4GB. How would I go about this? Third party applications like MacDrive create too much overhead when processing video files. FAT32 limits file sizes to 4GB.

Hi WillDuffy;
Your requirement of files greater than 4GB eliminates FAT.
In your case since you don't have access to the PC, I am afraid you are forced to use the NTFS. This will require you to use the reverse engineered effort called NTFS-3G to be able to write to the disk from your Mac. Sorry.
Allan
Message was edited by: Allan Eckert

Time Machine doesn't like external drives with multiple partitions

I've had a problem with Time Machine on both 10.5.0 & 10.5.1 - Time Machine could not create the initial backup regardless of all the things I tried.
I have a Powerbook with a 300Gb Maxtor connected via firewire 800. This drive had been partitioned into three partitions (which I've used with other backup tools without problem).
Apparently the problem I had been having with Time Machine was that there were three separate partitions on the external drive. As soon as I took a chance and wiped all of those partitions and made a single partition, everything was fine.
I had called Apple Tech Support shortly after I got Leopard and when I discovered the problem with Time Machine. I specifically asked if there would be a problem from the multiple partitions and they didn't think there would be, but they were sure. Looks like Apple was wrong.
If you are having problems with Time Machine with a drive that has multiple partitions, trying changing your external into a single partition drive.

You will note that I was referring to a Powerbook and the Apple Partition Scheme. There might be something different happening for Intel/GUID users.
10.5.1 did address other issues with other partition types. Time Machine seems to have trouble with certain partition schemes. I'm not surprised that multiple partitions and GUID works because of things like bootcamp. Apple probably tested specifically for that type of config. They may not have worked all the bugs out of multiple partitions on a Apple Partition Scheme.

Suggestions for formatting external drive with bad block?

I have a OWC Mercury 300 GB external drive. I wanted to erase it and use it as a backup for one of my laptops. The drive had been working fine as a Time Machine back up for an old (intel) iMac. I told Disk Utility to erase and reformat. It erased, but refused to reformat saying there was a bad block on the drive. Now Disk Utility recognizes the external drive but won't do anything with it. No Verify. No Repair. All grayed out. Any suggestions?

I wasn't a hard error, that's why. Repartitioning and reformatting will often fix soft errors in the directory structure. Had there been a real, new, bad block on the drive it would not be repairable. A soft bad block error can be fixed by reformatting. The hard block error may be fixable by using Zero Data one pass that may spare out the bad block. But if none of that works then you need to replace the drive.
You were fortunate that the error probably was spurious and resolved by repartitioning (may have been in the disk's RDB.)

External drives will not reformat to Mac OS Extended

I just moved several external drives from a PC to a Mac permanently and want to reformat them to Mac OS Extended. However, when I attempt to do it, I receive an error message saying that the formatting was unsuccessful after the disk is already erased. I am able to reformat them to DOS on the mac and the drives do work for some functions, but I need them formatted to Mac OS Extended in order to back them up with Time Machine.
The drives are fairly new; one is a Western Digital "My Book" 1TB only a few months old; the other two are LaCie "Big" 650 GB drives about two years old. They work fine, except for this one problem.
Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

You need to do the following:
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder. If you need to reformat your startup volume, then you must boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger or Leopard.)
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (for Intel Macs) or APM (for PPC Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.

How to format Windows drive with Mac OS format

Hello
I have a Windows 160gb internal drive that is formated in Fat32. I am unable to format this drive with Mac OS X 10.3.9 in order to install Tiger 10.4. When I attempt to format using the Mac OS extended (journaled), I receive an error (sorry I didn't write it down) partition error. If I use the Mac OS extended option I recieve an error that the drive can not be unmounted.
How can I format this 160gb drive with Mac OS format so that I may install Mac OS X 10.4
Thank you

Do the following:
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder. If you need to reformat your startup volume, then you must boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger or Leopard.)
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (only required for Intel Macs) then click on the OK button. Set the number of partitions from the dropdown menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the volume(s) mount on the Desktop.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process will take 30 minutes to an hour or more depending upon the drive size.
Steps 4-6 are optional but should be used on a drive that has never been formatted before, if the format type is not Mac OS Extended, if the partition scheme has been changed, or if a different operating system (not OS X) has been installed on the drive.

How to partition/format external drive?

Hi,
I bought a WD MyBook 320 GB external drive. It is by default formatted in fat32. However, fat32 has a ridiculous file size limitation! (<4GB)
I have 2 Macs, one windows and one linux boxes at home, one linux and one windows boxes at work. I want that all the machines has access to it. But maybe I can forget windows box. I need some advice, which one is better:
1. Format it as HFS+, forget windows, maybe I can use hfsutils for windows, and maybe I can access to it by this (is there anybody using hfsutils???)
2. Format 120 GB in HFS+, the rest fat32. I will use HFS partition just for full image of my mac's harddisks, and fat32 will be accessible to every computer.
Any suggestions?
Thanks...

You cannot format the drive with both Mac OS Extended and FAT32 partitions. If you need FAT32 you must format the entire drive FAT32. If you format the drive Mac OS Extended, then you will need software on the Window's PC that enables reading/writing Mac disks such as MacDrive.
To format the drive:
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in the Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing (this does not apply to external drives.) Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Click on the Options button and select the GUID partition scheme then click on OK. Set the number of partitions from the dropdown menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled, if supported.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the volume(s) mount on the Desktop.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled, if supported.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process will take 30 minutes to an hour or more depending upon the drive size.
If you prefer to format the entire drive as FAT32, then in Step 3 select the MBR partition scheme instead of GUID.
If you plan to use the external drive to backup your main hard drive then do that by cloning the main drive:
How to Clone Using Restore Option of Disk Utility
1. Select the destination drive on the Desktop and press COMMAND-I to open the Get Info window. At the bottom in the Ownership and Permissions section be sure the box labeled "Ignore Permissions on this Volume" is unchecked. Set Ownership and Permissions as follows: Owner=system with read/write; Group=admin with read/write; Other with read-only.
2. Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
3. Select the backup or destination volume from the left side list.
4. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (journaled, if available) and click on the Erase button.
5. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
6. Select the backup or destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
7. Select the startup or source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
8. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
For added precaution you can boot into safe mode before doing the clone.

How do I format an external drive with mountain lion?

How do I format an external drive with mountain lion?

Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility
select the external drive in the left pane
partition and format in the right pane

Using an external drive with shared files (iPhoto, iTunes), attached to a Time Capsule, can the contents of the external drive be backed-up to the internal Time Capsule drive? Perhaps a RAID1 mirror to a partition?

Using an external drive with shared files (iPhoto, iTunes), attached to a Time Capsule, can the contents of the external drive be backed-up to the internal Time Capsule drive? Perhaps a RAID1 mirror to a partitioned Time Capsule? I understand that the Time Machine (software) cannot backup a networked drive (the external) and that Time Capsule (the router/wireless hard drive) does not have its own backup software... so it won't backup the connected drive. What I would like is an alternate solution for having an automated backup of a networked drive. A 2TB Time Capsule has more than enough space for Time Machine backups of my family of Macbooks, so I had hoped to mirror a 500GB external drive (with shared media files) to a portion of the Time Capsule internal hard drive. I assume this would require a partition of the Time Capsule drive. If not, would the sparse file from the various computers being backed up need to be copied to the external drive as part of the RAID1 setup? This seems like overkill for the Time Machine backup, but it would cover the media files.

The complexity with this idea is the software has to run from a Mac computer on your network.. so you need a Mac turned on, probably most of the day.
It isn't possible to partition the TC although you can create a image area.
The software would have to copy the material, that means all files to be copied, go from USB drive, back to the Mac, then back to the TC, and written to the drive. In other words you have just added Network congestion, although a proper incremental backup type software will not actually use a lot of capacity.
Finally it will be slow.. network drives are slower than internal drives. Well USB connected drive is much slower than the same drive connected directly to the computer.. and if the drive is connected directly to a computer it can be shared with the network.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4577/airport-extreme-5th-gen-and-time-capsule-4th- gen-review-faster-wifi-/4
Read carefully the speed of the USB drive plugged into the TC.

Transfer files from Mac formatted external drive to PC formatted drive

i need to transfer quicktime files (that were captured from video with FCP) to a PC formatted external drive (for editing them in after effects on a PC). the files can be transfered by burning them on a DVD, but that will take a very long time and waste many DVDs because i have 60 GB of material... can this be done (without having to purchase expensive software)?

thanx tom,
first of, i like that you made the link appear as one word. how did you do that? it's really cool!
i downloaded the program, but i'm not sure how to use it... reading the guide just made me more confused... if i understand correctly, it will automatically reformat ALL my files to NTFS-3G ones, which are not as stable... i'm a little scared to install it... though i may have totally misunderstood what it says. i see mostly black when i try to read these kind of things...
anyone out there have experience with this program?

How do I format a new lacie external drive to work on a mac and pc?

i have a new lacie external drive. I want to partition it into 2 parts, one to use in Macs and the other in PCs.
How do I do this in Disk Utility?
thanks!

Click on the entire drive in the Disk Utility's sidebar, then on the Partition tab, and set it up. Format one partition as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and the other as MS-DOS.
(84527)

Format External Drive with 2 partitions (NTFS & Mac OS Extended)

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for