Formatting an external drive for both 10.4 & windows?

I just installed windows xp on my macbook pro.
What is the safest/most reliable way to format an external drive so I can use it with both windows and 10.4?
Thanks in advance

'FAT32'
But it has file size limitations.
Better to partition the external drive with Mac Extended on one, and Windows on the other.

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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

Use external drive for both Time Machine and storage for Back to My Mac

Hi all,
I have been "a Mac" now for over a year and just keep finding cool new things that make me happy I switched. The latest thing is Back to My Mac offered with my Mobile Me account. With a rather convoluted mix of PC/Mac/iOS devices to manage - best $99 I ever spent btw...
I also have a 1TB Time Capsule that I have been using with Time Machine to back up all four of my Mac computers at home. Needless to say, the 1TB is really struggling to handle the amount of data being backed up and certainly leaves no room for anything else.
What I wanted to do was to attach a larger external hard drive via a powered hub to the USB port on the Time Capsule and use it for Time Machine backups while using the internal 1TB drive with Back to My Mac so that I can have remote access to all my data from anywhere without having to leave my computer running at home all the time in order for my laptop to "see" it when I'm away. And, yes, the amount of that data far exceeds what any level of Mobile Me subscription can offer! I should also mention that the hard drive is the only USB device connected through the hub to the Time Capsule at the moment. There are no other devices that might be "getting in the way".
I'm thinking maybe all this is asking too much without the addition of a dedicated file server (Mac Mini, perhaps - not a purchase my budget wants to make).
I understand that the Time Capsule doesn't support partitions, so I bought a Western Digital 2TB Elements drive, connected it to my Macbook Pro and used Disk Utility to reformat the drive from the incompatible NTFS it shipped in to a single, Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partition. I then made two folders on the drive, one for Time Machine backups and one for Back to My Mac remote storage/access. Great.
However, when I connected the 2TB drive to my Time Capsule I could not see it at all. Time Capsule was reporting problems in the way of a disk error. From within my Airport Utility, I could see the trouble was the external drive. The utility suggested connecting the drive to a Mac and using it's Disk Utility to troubleshoot.
I followed through, checking the disk, etc. and ended up reformatted the drive on my Macbook Pro yet again with the same specifications as before but without the folders and reconnected it to the Time Capsule. Same deal. But now, I can't even remotely connect to the Time Capsule at all. I can see the Time Capsule in the shared area of my Macbook's Finder but can not connect. The connection tries and fails even before it gets to asking me for username and password credentials.
Long story short, first of all, I suppose I would like to know if I'm asking for the impossible?
Second, if what I want to do *is* possible, what steps do I need to take to make it so?
Thanks in advance for any advice or suggestions you might have.

Well, I have now reformatted/partitioned my poor WD Elements 2TB drive about a dozen times as well as restarted my 1TB Time Capsule so many times it's no wonder it's as confused as I am! <G>
Last night, at your suggestion, William, and in respect for your continued support, I tried creating two 1TB Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partitions on the WD external USB drive, both with GUID partition tables. Both volumes mounted to my laptop's desktop flawlessly and without issue.
Once the external drive was connected to the Time Capsule, however, it was a crap shoot as to whether or not the drive was recognized at all, reporting a problem with the disk, or, even at one point, mounting one of the two volumes but not both. <sigh>
I read somewhere on the Internet that you need to restart the Time Capsule for volumes on an external USB drive to be recognized.
So I tried that. I connected the freshly partitioned/formatted disk to the Time Capsule and restarted it. This succeed in removing the issue of reporting a nameless drive with a capacity of 0MB. It then reported the drive with its correct name but would not recognize whatever volumes in whatever partitions that particular crack at it contained with the exception of the once, as I mentioned above, when only one of two volumes mounted correctly and was listed with the right name and capacity on the Time Capusule's Setup's Disk tab.
At this point I have given up on my goal to use the external drive with Time Machine to back up my Macs or to hope I will ever be able to see its contents remotely via Back to My Mac. All I would like to do now is simply find a reason why I can't get it successfully connected and playing nice with my Time Capsule in the first place!
Any further suggestions or advice as to what steps I might take next would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you all.

External drive for both Mac & Windows

I'd like to be able to do the smart thing and have a backup of the drives on my iMac. I've got Windows installed thru Boot Camp, which I access using VMware Fusion.
When I visited an Apple Store, one of the guys there told me that I could get an external hard drive, format it for each drive, and Time Machine would back it up. Having no idea how to do this, I thought I'd check here.
First of all, I'm not sure whether to get a 500GB or 1TB external HD--I have a 500GB HD on my iMac, but I'm only using roughly 100GB of it, and I have no plans to use much more than 150GB. Do I need a huge drive?
Once I have the HD, how do I format it for Mac & Windows XP separately? I know I have to partition it, but after that....what?
Next, is it possible to use Time Machine for both drives? Or will I only be able to use it for the Mac drive and manually backup XP?
After reading some other posts, I'm wondering if it's wise to update to 10.5.5. Any advice on this?
Any help/suggestions would be great--thanks!

TM will not backup a Windows partition. If you create a disk image drive with VM Fusion TM will back it up, but only the entire image file.
If you partition an external drive using GUID, then you can format one of the partitions FAT32 to use with Windows, but TM will not backup that partition nor backup anything on your main drive to that partition.
A TM backup drive or partition should be at least twice the capacity of the capacity of the drive you are backing up. If your iMac drive is 500 GBs then your backup drive's capacity should be roughly twice that size (less the space you have allocated as the Boot Camp partition.)
There's no reason not to update to 10.5.5, but if you prefer not to that's your choice. It isn't necessary although if you are going to use TM it would be wise to update because several TM bugs have been fixed by the 10.5.5 update.

External Drive for both PC and G4

Hi-I am new to this, so please explain in very simple terms.
I need to get an external hard drive (looked at Maxtor& seagate so far. Need 300-500 GB. I am in Fashion deisgn and need to downoad programs off the main frame at work. I will do this through my PC at work. Then, I want to be able to take my drive home and use it for both my Gateway laptop and my G4.
I have gotten a hundred different explanations of how to make it work or it won't.
Basically, will a Maxtor one touch III or Seagate free agent Pro work. I have been told that they are both formatted in Ntfs and need to be changed to FAT32, but FAT runs very
Slowly, but this will allow me to use it with both the PC and G4. Others have said that some units already come formatted in FAT. Then I read somewhere on apple support that there is a third type of formatting, HT something, but will this work with both computers.
I like the Seagate because it has a 5 year warranty.
Also, is firewire 800 worth the upcost, is it that much faster?
I also read from apple forums that you need to set up an internal network to use the 2 computers, is that correct? I am not very computer knowledgeable and this seems like a Big deal.
Any recommndations on specific external drive units that work well with both pc and g4 is appreciated.
Thanks

Any external Firewire/USB2 hard drive will work but you have to format the drive as FAT32 using Disk Utility if you want to be able to plug it directly to both a Mac and a PC. FAT32 has a file size limit of 4GB, so it is not ideal for transporting, say digital movie footage.
If you know how to network your Mac and PC together, then you could just format the hard drive as NTFS, the standard file system for Windows computers, and share it from the Windows PC.
If you right-click a folder in Windows you can bring up its Properties, select the Sharing tab and there you can easily share the entire contents of that folder on the network. You can share an entire hard drive in the same way.
I would play around with this first on your Gateway laptop till you are confident that you are able to transfer files between your Mac and PC.
You connect your two computers using an ethernet cable. Depending on the network interface cards in your computers, you may be able to connect them directly to one another. Otherwise you will need a network device switch, more popularly known as a network "hub".

Using a single external drive for both Time Machine AND for manual backups?

I'm new to Leopard and haven't launched Time Machine yet. I would like to use a single (500 GB) external hard drive to use with Time Machine, plus I would like to use whatever portion of this external drive Time Machine isn't using to keep some other files upon it as well--things that I can drag-and-drop manually and then trash from my computer's HD (avi files, etc., so that they don't take up space on the computer). Is there anything special I need to do with the external hard drive before I let Time Machine have its way with it, so that I can also do drag-and-drop manual file backups with it?

I’m not terribly knowledgeable, but I’ll tell you what seems to be working for me.
I also have a 500GB external drive which I had planned to use for TM for my MBP. I partitioned it (using Disk Utility) into two partitions. One I created nearly the same size as my MBP drive, the other I used for TM.
I used the smaller partition for a backup using SuperDuper prior to upgrading from Tiger to Leopard. Once I tested that I was able to boot from it and that all my programs seemed to work, I upgraded to Leopard and told it to use the other partition for TM.
It then created a TM icon for the other partition and, to the machine, it looks like a separate drive. I’ve seen no performance hit at all.
Just one man’s experience, though I haven’t yet tried to retrieve anything.
Good luck.

Trying to format an external drive for imac

Hi I am new to this and have just bought an external drive to back up my imac, 9,1 via time machine. I have followed the instructions in disk utility to erase and reformat, but it is coming back with an error message " could not unmount disk" - can anyone help me get round this please?

An iMac running OS 9.1.x? If so, post to http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=99. If not, since you're mentioning Time Machine, correct your profile information. From Finder->Help->Mac Help: *erase a disk*, returns:
*+To erase a disk:+*
+Open Disk Utility, in the Utilities folder in the Applications folder.+
+Open Disk Utility+
+Select the disk in the list at left, and then click Erase.+
+For more information about erasing, click the Help button (looks like a question mark).+

Formatting SimpleTech external drive for Mac

Many, many apologies if this is a repeated question, but I've looked for a while and not found a solution.
I am trying to format my SimpleTech prodrive for my PowerBookG4 Mac. The error "could not unmount disc" keeps appearing.
This is despite some of the fixes I've seen online (i.e. using Partition1 instead of the 'erase' as the instructions do, and also changing from Master Boot Record to GUID partition or Apple partition)...
Nothing I've tried seems to work.
Does anyone have any other advice? It would be greatly appreciated. And apologies again if this is somewhere else on the forum...
J

Odd. Which interface between computer and drive are you using?

How to format WD external drive for Mac

Just got the WD MyBook 2TB. It's not the one specifically for Mac. It says it is compatible, needs to reformat. How easy is it to reformat? It is for Time Machine. Thanks.

Connect it, power it up, go to Disk Utility (in Applications/Utilities), select the WD disk on the left, go to the Erase tab, and choose "Mac OS Extended". Click Erase. That should do it.
You should then a) see it mount on the desktop, and b) automatically get a prompt to use the drive for Time Machine - if not, you can go into the Time Machine menu (top right of the screen), go to TM Preferences, and select it.
Matt

How to Format an External Drive for Windows-only

I'm a mac user, and I'm selling a used external hard drive on eBay. I want to offer to format it correctly if a Windows user buys it, and I don't want to assume newbie eBay people will have the knowledge/interest in formatting themselves.
Will "MS-DOS (FAT)" work perfectly fine for a modern Windows user? If not, is there some other way I can format this thing on my end?

Thanks, Niel and Bob
I found s/w called Tuxera NTFS for Mac allowing you to format NTFS on a Mac. Costs $31 but there's a 15 day free trial.
There's also a freeware app floating around out there using MacFuse and NTFS-3G, but there are conflicting reports on Mavericks compatibility and overall reliability.

Can i use time capsule as external hard drive for both mac and windows

I have a mac book pro, ipad and iphone and ipod and a windows pc
Can i use time capsule as a external hard disk only for all of the above ( including windows ) without the back up activity for mac ?

You cannot access the TC from iOS devices without a browser. eg filebrowser.
Can i use time capsule as a external hard disk only for all of the above ( including windows ) without the back up activity for mac ?
Yes, with the following proviso.. the TC is not able to back itself up.. so if you store files on the TC without backups one day you will discover all your files are gone because of a hard drive failure of the TC. TM also cannot backup TC.. so you will need to buy a proper backup software.
It is also much slower than a real NAS..
And windows can be a bit painful.. especially windows 8.. other versions should work if you spend the time getting everything set right.

Video formats and optimum settings for both Mac and Windows XP

Now this is a strange one: I create a Windows Media (WMV) file and it plays great on the Mac (I have Flip4Mac installed also). However, it doesn't play on Windows XP in MSIE -- but the QuickTime (.M4V file) does. I do have QuickTime installed on the WXP. I guess the following questions are of interest not only to me but to a lot of people:
1. What are the absolute optimum settings and format for a QuickTime file that will be played on an Apple in Safari or other browser? .MOV? .M4V? .MP4?
2. Same question for Windows XP. .AVI? .WMV?
I know there is a lot of already available information on this but I'm looking for a video expert who has troubleshot this to death and has this down and working on an existing website.
NOTE: I would make it a Flash file but Keynote exports a non-playing Flash format file as does QuickTime, so no luck there. Also, for some stupid reason Keynote separates the audio and video when exporting to a QuickTime movie and what's with that?
Sorry this got long but not only I, but I'm sure a lot of people have this set of questions. Much appreciated.
Mac OS X (10.4.8)

sorchard –
Depends – if you are planning on connecting to an Exchange Server then I would suggest that you install Crossover (www.codeweavers.com) on your Mac’s and then Office 2003/Outlook. I am connecting to an Exchange Server running Windows Small Business Server 2003 and have not had any problems using Outlook and sharing Calendar data between my XP and Mac systems.
If you are not planning on using Exchange and your mail usage is not that demanding (less than 20 messages daily) the you could use the basic Mail clients that come with OSX (Mail) and Windows (Outlook Express).
Respectfully –

Formatting External drive for Mac05

I am trying to format a Western Digital external drive for Mac05 Extended (journaled) in order to transfer photos from my I photo program to free up space on my hard drive, as per suggestions received in this support site. I have downloaded information from Western digital, but it is coupled with 'How to partition and format an internal slave drive or an external drive in a Mac OS X." Once I select Disk utility, the drives are not displayed. Anyone have any suggestions how to format the external drive for Mac05 Extended (journaled)??

I am trying to format a Western Digital external drive for Mac05 Extended (journaled) in order to transfer photos from my I photo program to free up space on my hard drive, as per suggestions received in this support site. I have downloaded information from Western digital, but it is coupled with 'How to partition and format an internal slave drive or an external drive in a Mac OS X." Once I select Disk utility, the drives are not displayed. Anyone have any suggestions how to format the external drive for Mac05 Extended (journaled)??

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

I have an external drive - WD My Passport FOR MAC. I want to format it to work on both mac and windows. Which format do you think I should use? Will either one cause damage to the files on the hard drive?

I have an external hard drive - WD My Passport FOR MAC. I want to format it to work on both mac and windows. I also want to be able to connect it to my TV and watch movies.
I read up and I think I am supposed to use exFAT or FAT32? I also saw MS-DOS. Which format should I should use? Will any of them cause damage to the files on the hard drive?
My little memory stick uses MS-DOS and it works on both mac and windows.
Please can you just tell me a little about each and suggest which one to use.
I know how to change it once you tell me so don't waste your time writing about changing it.

Will any of them cause damage to the files on the hard drive?
WARNING: FORMATTING A DRIVE ERASES IT COMPLETELY !!
If you need to carry large files (e.g., larger than about 4GB) back and forth, you may need ExFAT. Otherwise MS-DOS works for smaller files.
The Mac can Read, but not write Windows New Technology File System (NTFS) without an add-on program such as Paragon NTFS.

Formatting an external drive for both 10.4 & windows?

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