Formatting external drive as FAT32

what are the disadvantages of formatting an external drive as FAT32?

The best bet for most uses is FAT32 file system. For more security, other file systems are available, but you need to get third party software in order to allow windows or mac to read/write respectively.
NTFS (Windows NT File System) is the most advanced Windows system, developed for NT, and used in windows NT, 2000, XP & Vista. Macintosh systems can read NTFS, but cannot write to it unless third party software is installed. This software may come at a price (usually around $25-$30)
HFS+J (Mac OS Extended (Journaled)) is an advanced Macintosh file system that is probably the most secure way to go, however Windows systems cannot read or write to this file system unless third party software is installed.
FAT32 is an old windows file system that is used universally among many devices. This file system also has a size limit of 4GB. It can store many files as long as each single file is less than 4GB. On Windows VISTA, you cannot copy groups of small files totaling more than 4GB at a time. Macintosh and Windows systems, as well as other systems like Playstation 3 can Read and Write to FAT32 without third party software. There is no third party software available for Ps3 to date.

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Can't format external drive as FAT32

I just bought a brand new 4TB Seagate external HDD with the notion that I would hook it up to the back of my Time Capsule. I will want this drive accessible for both Mac and PC. According to this page my only real option then is FAT32. Here's my problem. When I open Disk Utility and select my drive, and then the Erase tab, no option will work for erasing the disk. I get an error. If I select the volume (indented under the drive) and the Erase tab, I don't get FAT32 as an option. I have the "Mac OS Extended" and "exFAT" as my only options. I can format the drive successfully using either of these two. However, the Time Capsule only recognises it has been formatted as "Mac OS Extended" as expected. Can anyone tell me how I can use Disk Utility to format the drive as FAT32 format?

Ok, that worked.... kind of. When I selected the Partition tab and '1 Partition' it allowed me to format it as FAT32. I went and plugged it into the Time Capsule, and the drive shows up in the Airport Utility under the "Disks" tab. However, something still isn't kosher here. When I open a Finder window and click on my Time Capsule, I see the external drive. But the file I copied onto to it immediately after doing the format doesn't show up. It appears as though the drive is empty. Then after about 30 seconds I get an error message that my drive can't be found.
On a side note, I have formatted the drive as exFAT, but when I plug it into the Time Capsule, it does not recognize it all. Because the page I linked to in my original post did not specify exFAT that's why I wanted to try FAT32.

Disk Utility won't let me format external drive to FAT32

Maybe this cannot be done or the answer is simple and I am missing it. I have a 1.5tb Maxtor drive hooked up via fw800. I want to have 120gb of this as Mac OS extended journaled to back up my internal drive via Time Machine. I want the other 1.38tb to be in FAT32 so I can share files between my windows and mac machines. I keep all of my external storage except for the backup partition in FAT32. I have never had an issue until I upgrades to Leopard and now when I click on the larger partition I only have the option for the 4 mac formats-- FAT32 is not available. I can format the entire 1.5tb to FAT32 but once I try and partition it only mac formats are available. I forgot to mention I just did the upgrade to 10.5.1 and the issue is still present.
How do I format the smaller partition as mac os extended journaled and the larger as FAT32? Any help is appreciated.
Thanks so much,
Patrick
PS. I did a search but did not find anything.
Message was edited by: PatrickB

It may depend on the type of partition table scheme you are using (see bottom of page in disk utility for that says Apple Partition Map/APM, GUID Partition table/GPT or Master Boot Record/MBR partition map).
MS-Windows can read MBR scheme only (64 bit MS-Windows supports GPT, according to MS). If you have Apple Partition Map, your disk won't be usable on Windows. I suspect you have APM partition table and hence the disk utility is not giving the option for FAT32 format, since you can't use it under MS-Windows.
On the Mac side, all 3 schemes are readable (for bootability, you'll need APM on PPC Macs, GPT for Intel Macs). Time Machine doesn't need a bootable disk, but I'd suggest APM/GPT if you are using PPC/Intel macs respectively (but I'd think either will work for Time Machine, if you have a mix of Macs).
But here's the catch - Apple says Time Machine won't work with drives with MBR partition map (even though Macs are MBR-aware), so the issue for you is Time Machine's ability to use MBR drives. http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306932
I suspect unless you are on an Intel Macs (OS X) and use only 64 bit MS-Windows (using GPT)/Itanium, using the same disk for TM and FAT32 sharing between Mac and Win worlds is not possible. Not the desirable answer.
If you do want to experiment, make a temporary setup and try it out on both Mac side and Windows side first (on all your machines), before making a "production" system. You can select the DISK (first line on Disk Utility for that disk, not second line) and click on Options at the left bottom (it might have to be erased first) and then select the type of partition scheme. Note formats like HFS+/FAT32 are a level lower in the hierarchy than partition map/table.
Let us know what you find out/decide?

Formatting external drive to FAT32?

Hi, I have trolled thorugh the forums for an answer to my external hard drive formatting problems, but alas, I cannot find it.
So here's my question:
My external hard drive is formatted to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) but I want to transfer some files from my PC.
I have tried to format it to FAT32 in Disk Utility, but the only options I have to format the disk to are Mac OS Extended (there's a couple), MS-DOS File System, and UNIX file system.
That's it. The drive is supposed to be Mac and PC compatible, so can anyone tell how I can format it so I can get these files from my PC?
Thanks.
MacBook

Welcome to the Apple Discussions!
On a Windows PC:
Connect the HD to your Windows PC
Go to My Computer
Click right on the external HD icon
Chose the format option
Now you get a little programm
Here you can select FAT32
I don't know how big your external HD is, but the maximum size for a FAT32 partition is 32 GB. If the HD is larger, you can only use the first 32 GB! Maybe you didn't know this.
With this application you can acces a Mac OS Extended formatted HD on your Windows (you will really like it!):
http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive6/
Probably this is a better solution if your HD is larger then 32 GB.
Hopefully this is helpfull or solved your problem.
(please see the "helpfull" and "solved" button's above this message)

How to Format external drive previously formatted for NSLU2

Windows XP.
I've had two external hard drives connected to my NSLU2 for several years. Always worked properly. Nevery any problems accessing files from either drive. Now, I'd like to remove one external drive and no longer use it with the NSLU2 (Disk 1). I just want to use it as a "regular" external drive and connect it directly to my PC by USB. When I plug it into my PC, it is not visible in Windows Explorer. When I right click "My Computer" and select "Manage", I can see it in the "Disk Management" section, but there is no drive letter assigned to it. It has partitions. When I right click on any partition, the "Format" option is grayed out and cannot be selected. Also, the "Change Drive Letter..." option is grayed out and cannot be selected. How can I format this disk back to whatever it needs to be in order to use it as a regular external drive? NOTE: I do not need to keep any files on the drive. I've already transferred the files I need to another drive. Thanks!

Never mind. I figured it out. I downloaded a free utility for formatting large drives in FAT32. The utility ran a quick format in just a few seconds and then the drive became available in Windows Explorer where I can now perform a complete format or just use as-is.

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

Format external drive partition under 10.2.8

Hello. I have been trying to setup a WD My Book 500gb with 2 partitions to be used as on offsite backup unit for our business computers. We have one Mac (this G5), and 4 Windows stations (3 XP/ 1 98SE). I am trying to setup this unit with one partition using NTFS and the other with Mac HFS or HFS+ file systems. I have found a utility that allows me to format the partition that I intend to use with the Mac as a FAT32 partition. I then tried bringing the WD MyBook to the G5 and reformatting that partition as HFS. When I run Disk Utility, I click on the partition showing as Fat32 under disk2 and then click on the Erase tab, select Mac OS X Extended file system, no OS9 drivers, have tried various names (Mac BU, My Mac BU, My MacBook, etc), then click Erase, Confirm Erase. The progress bar comes up for a moment or so, says that it is erasing the volume, then exits out as if done. Unfortunately, it never mounts the drive and the volume no longer shows up in Disk Utility (only shows the Drive without any recognized partitions) until I close and restart Disk Utility. When I restart Disk Utility, the volume I am trying to format once again shows up under the drive, tho now with no name. Under Identification, it says Mount Point: Not Mounted/ Format: MS-DOS/ Capacity: 116.44gb. After doing some browsing around onthe internet trying to troubleshoot this on my own, I found some reference to Disk Utility logs (supposedly avail in upper right corner, tho didn't find there). I searched in the Library/Logs/Crash Reporter and found 'Disk Utility.crash.log' which says:
Date/Time: 2008-09-17 21:25:42 -0400
OS Version: 10.2.8 (Build 6S90)
Host: Joanns-Computer.local.
Command: Disk Utility
PID: 540
Exception: EXCBADACCESS (0x0001)
Codes: KERNPROTECTIONFAILURE (0x0002) at 0x01215088
Any suggestions on how I might get this partition formatted for a Mac file system? I would use Fat32, but I plan to use RSyncX to backup this G5 and would like to make the backup bootable in case of critical failure. And since I am using this drive as a backup storage device rather than file sharing system, I have no need to access files on either partition from the opposite operating system.
Thanks in advance for any help that can be rendered. Also, if more info or more of the log file is needed to diagnose, please let me know.
PS: Sorry if this is in wrong forum. Wasn't sure if this falls under Setup, Customizing or something else.

You can either format the drive entirely FAT32 that can be used on both Windows and Mac or you can format the drive entirely for the Mac, but you cannot have one partition of each on the same drive (not with Jaguar. You would need Leopard to accomplish that and an Intel Mac.)
There is this article/hint explaining a method for doing so, but I do not know if it is doable with Jaguar. Maybe Panther since the hint appeared about the time Panther was released.

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 to access an ex fat formatted external drive on OS 10.6.8

How do I access an ex fat formatted external drive on OS 10.6.8 ? Drive has audio files and was originally formatted and created by a Windows PC.
When the La Cie drive is plugged in to my mac mini, it says can not recognize formatting.

Read this thread
exFAT mounting problem

Disappeared: 48GB of files on fat32 formatted external drive

All of a sudden my files from my MB Air (OS X 10.7.2) on a 300 GB Maxtor external drive disappereed. The more info shows 48GB are used on the disc; the format is: MS-DOS (Fat32); and there is another partition for my PC docs, and it's fine. Help!

Ok, confirmed. It is NTFS and according to the permissions I can only read it. The frustrating thing is that it says:
    - Capacity: 74.53 GB
    - Available: 50.35 GB
    - Used: 24.18 GB on disk
and yet at the bottom of the file list it shows "0 items"
Now the dilemma. The harddrive on my Windows laptop is very small (30GB) so I cannot copy all of my pictures to it. I could hook the old harddrive and the new harddrive up to it at the same time and move them from old to new, however...
The new harddrive is supposed to only be for the Mac so my intention was to format it that way. Because I am not sure if/how I am going to need it to resolve this issue, the box hasn't even been opened...so the first question is long term would it be better to have the new harddrive MAC or FAT32 formatted?
I have been assuming that Mac formatting was the preferred route so I am still brainstorming on ways to get the files straight from the old harddrive to the Mac. Could it just be a matter of the files being hidden on the old harddrive? How do I unhide them?

Format External Drive for HFS+ volume and FAT32 volume with Disk Utility

I just bought a Seagate 1tb external drive from OWC and I want to partition it into a HFS+ (journaled I assume) volume and a NTFS volume. Objective: To manually backup critical folders from my wife’s Dell (running XP) to the NTFS volume and critical Mac folders from my PowerBookG4 to the HFS volume.
My plan was to have my Mac (10.4.11) do the partitioning into a 350gb FAT32 volume for Windows and a 650gb HFS+ volume for Mac – then take the external drive to the Dell and have the Dell reformat the 350gb FAT drive to NTFS.
First question – Is this possible overall?
Second question – I haven’t been able to get my Disk Utility on my Mac to do the initial partitioning into one HFS volume and one FAT32 volume the way I want it. Is this step possible?
I’m happy to be more specific about the steps I’ve taken if the basic plan is good. From what I’ve found in some forums so far, I think I’m on the right track but am unable to execute it. Thank you.

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!

How to format an external drive as FAT32?

Hi. In 10.4, you used to be able to format drives as FAT32. Seems 10.5 has lost this ability. I need to format a drive in order to recover some lost data from a nearly dead PC. Unfortunately, the PC cannot do the formatting so the only "live" computer I have is my Mac. If this cannot be done in 10.5, is there an external utility that can do this for me?
Thanks!
p.s I've got Parallels and XP2, but it won't recognize my Lacie USB drive when I plug it in, perhaps because it's formatted for Mac.

I take it then that you don't have XP running natively either on your Mac.
Leopard has made changes so that sometimes a FW or USB2 drive won't mount or show up, which often means that new OS X requires a firmware update for the bridge it uses - Oxford or some other - and the vendor needs updated firmware.
That leads to a 'catch-22' situation.
If you boot from a DVD (Tiger or Leopard) same problem? FAT (or MSDOS) has always worked here, any size, even mixed.
If you do get it to mount, I would go to Partition tab in DU, then Options... and change it to Master Boot Record.
I know you want FAT, but just to see if it helps, you could try the NTFS driver MacFUSE 3G to see if it helps any (it can format to NTFS if the drive is using MBR).
Try plugging in the USB drive after the system is booted if you haven't yet. IntechUSA Speedtools has a PC Format utility, but I don't think it really adds anything and costs as much as a new drive would, which is always one option.
http://www.macsales.com/firewire - never had any trouble with these.

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!

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

Disk utility wont format external drive

Hi all
I have a friends 1 TB toshiba external drive, purchased at office works. I am trying to format it for NTFS so he can use it to watch the movies he is copying on any machine, xbox etc..
using disk utility I am erasing the 1tb drive with the NTFS format option, then I am creating the partition with NTFS but after formatting, it is only allowing me to read. I have tried formating the hard drive with Mac OSX journaled and then creating the partition at 1tb with NTFS, but getting the same issue.
I am a little confused as I just did the same thing with my 2TB drive I purchased from Office works as well.
any ideas?
bret

Hi Bret. I am not sure I fully understand the details of your problem - the mention of another drive (the 2TB one) confused me a little. I'll try to help though because it doesn't look like anyone has had a chance to reply to your question yet.
As far as I can see, OS X doesn't write to NTFS formatted drives by default. It appears you can enable it by altering the mount options, e.g. http://learnaholic.me/2013/11/11/enable-ntfs-write-on-mac-os-x-mavericks/
Alternatively, perhaps just formatting it as FAT32 would achieve your aim - although now that I check, it doesn't really look suitable as it has a 4GB file size limit and some of the movies could be over that.
Hope that helps.
Ivan

Formatting external drive as FAT32

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