Format External Hard drive to Mac format.

Hey! I have a Seagate hard drive (1.5 TB) and I want to run it on my MacBook Air but it's in NTFS format. I don't want to download any 3rd party side to run it. I want to Convert the hard drive's format so that it's compatible with Mac. I have a back up of all my data (I know it erases data when re-formatting). First a dialouge box used to come up prompting to convert and re-format it. But now nothing happens. How do I re-format it so that it's in the Ma's format??
P.S --> I downloaded the NTFS third party thing (trial version) and it's expired (finally) so do I need to uninstall it too?

Thank you so much for the well detailed answer, it really helped didn't need to download any additional software or third party applications, just did as you said and it worked.
Thanks again

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OK. Start with:
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jnrmendonca
It had 4 years of photos and videos on it.
To what did your camera record those photos and videos - camera's internal memory, inserted memory card, other?
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I want to format a Seagate Expansion External Hard Drive for Mac and PC

I ordered a Seagate Expansion 2 TB USB 3.0 Desktop External Hard Drive to use with my new Mac and my old PC (or at least get my photos off of both and put them on the drive). I thought all HDs could be formatted to use by both, I was able to get a Mac HD to work with my PC in 2008 (but it died). I am reading that this drive is PC only. I have Parallels and Windows 8 on my Mac if worse comes to worse but I would like all of my computers, real, virtual old and new to be able to access the external drive. Has anyone encountered this issue before? What should I format it in? FAT32? If yes, how would I go about that on a Mac. Or should I just return it?
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Drive Partition and Format
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
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4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) you will use for Windows from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to MSDOS.
6. Click on the Erase button.
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I have a problem: I want to use an external hard drive on my Mac as well as on a PC and a TV. The normal structure of Mac (Journaled) isn't supported by PC/ TV. I changed the structue into DOS(FAT) on my Mac. That's suppoerted by TV and PC. But I'll use the hard drive for storage of HD films so I'm afraid that the structure is not good enough for this (it seems old to me DOS.....) And I don't want the quality to be influenced by a bad structure.
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I have an external hard drive that I would like to make compatible with BOTH Mac and Windows. I don't want to split it but is there any way that I can make it compatible to where I can use it back and forth between both? I have classes and use Photoshop on both systems and need to be able to read and write to the hard drive from each system. Please let me know if this is possible and how? Thanks

I have a 500GB external HDD which I had to format o Fat32 a while ago. I don't remember exactly how I did it, but I remember it was a pain in the *** and took forever (I was under Windows XP).
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http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32format.htm
http://macosx.com/forums/mac-os-x-system-mac-software/270038-format-new-hard-dis k-into-fat32.html
http://en.kioskea.net/faq/sujet-676-formatting-your-drive-with-fat32
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Formatting external hard drive for mac

Hi I am having trouble reformatting an external Hard drive from my Windows computer to my new Mac any guidance would be appriciated thx.

http://www.cultofmac.com/92845/formatting-external-hard-drives-in-os-x-video-how -to/

Formatting an external hard drive for mac.

Hi- I just bought a SimpleTech Pro 1TB External hard drive from Best Buy. I already own about 4 other external hard drives of various brands (WD, Maxtor, Seagate, Etc.). If I remember correctly, in the past to format those drives for OSX, I've just gone into disk utility, selected the drive on the left, and went to the erase tab, chose volume format: Mac OS Extended, named it, clicked erase and a few minutes later my drive was ready for use. For some reason now I am getting an error (format failed) shortly after I click erase. It will allow me to choose fat32 to format the drive, but whenever I try for a Mac OS format I get this same error. Any ideas?
By the way, I tried this on a Seagate drive yesterday and the same thing happened. So I returned it thinking it wouldn't work with a mac. So I don't think it's the drive.

Choose partition and GUID in option and after format in HFS+
Message was edited by: Nardac

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Hello. I am still using a 2005 PPC iMac running Tiger. My photos are stored in Aperture and Lightroom 2, however they are all stored on my computer's hard drive. I want to remove them from my computer and store them on an external hard drive instead.
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I understand that the hard drives can be shared for both formats using FAT32, how would this format affect my Lightroom/Aperture Libraries? Or would it just be better to get an individual hard drive each? If so can you recommend any good ones for use with the mac that are not too costly?

Fat32 will limit File sixes to 4 GB & have some naming restrictions.
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NTFS-3G Stable Read/Write Driver...
http://www.ntfs-3g.org/
MacFUSE: Full Read-Write NTFS for Mac OS X, Among Others...
http://www.osnews.com/story/16930
MacDrive for the PCs... allows them to Read/Write HFS+...
http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/

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i have a 320GB simple tech external hard drive that i used for my mac book pro. My mac book pro broke down completely so i bought an Asus laptop which runs Windows 7. I go to plug in the external hard drive, however i cant access it. It does show up under devices and printers but i cant open it in anyway. The only option i get is to eject it. is there any way that i can get it so that my new laptop can read it ?

i have the same issue, but when I right click on the partion, the option to assign a drive letter is grey'd out. i do not see a disk format either, it is blank in that section (FileSystem).
What can I do? i have Windows XP
Hey I had the exact same problem. I was using my external hard drive on a MacBook and wanted to format it so that it would work on XP but when I opened Disk Management all the options were greyed out. Here's how I solved the problem:
1. Connect your external hard drive to your mac
2. Open Disk Utility (command+F and type 'disk utility')
3. Click the drive you want to format in the left hand pannel
4. Click the 'partition' tab
5. Select under Volume Scheme '1 partition'
6. Under Volume Information, under format select 'MS- DOS (FAT)'
7. Click 'Apply'
The disk should now be formatted in FAT32 which is compatible with Windows XP. After completing those steps I connect the hard drive to my PC and I was able to read and write in the volume. Hope this helps!

External hard drive for Mac and Windows?

Hey all,
Is it possible to set up an external hard drive with a partition that has one side compatible with Mac and the other with Windows, similar to a Boot Camp setup on an internal drive? If so, how do I do that? Thanks for any advice you can give.

Rekishika:
Yes it is possible. Use Disk Utility from Leopard and partition the external drive to the desired space for each. Format one side with Mac HFS+ Journaled and the other with FAT32 (You can reformat the FAT32). You can also format both external partitions to FAT32 if you want Leopard and Windows to access (read and write)either one of them.
Axel F.

Format External Hard drive to Mac format.

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