How do I format an external hard drive to be Mac OS Extended (Journaled)?

I am in Disc Utilities, but I can't figure out how to format my external drive. It is at 0, ready to go... Just need the steps...
Thanks,
Ham

Hi(Bonjour)!
The following process will erase everything on your external HD and reformat it to Mac OS journaled partition.
1) open disk utilities application.
2) click your external hard drive's name in the left column.
3) select the "erase" tab in right.
4) select "Mac OS X extended journalized" in local menu.
5) click "erase button".
Formatting a 250 Gig hd can take much than one hour...
Michel Boissonneault

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Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your 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. 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. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to MBR then click on the OK button. Set the format type to MSDOS (FAT) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.

Is it possible to format an external hard drive on my mac?

I purchased a portable external hard drive to back up my former pc in the hopes of using it on my mac. Obviously, I did not research this seeing now that I can integrate my files and photos from my pc to my mac. It appears possible to format the external hard drive to my mac os, which should be done prior to downloading files from my pc to the hard drive. Has anyone dealt with this or am I the only idiot that purchased the external hard drive thinking that was the thing to do before my pc dies completely?

A HD formatted in EXFAT will transfer data between both PC and Mac.
However dont make the titanic error most do in having merely a single external HD backup of your data, thats a tragedy waiting to happen.
HD are cheap as dirt.
Ideal situation is 3 HD , 1 for Mac backups, 1 for data archives stored away safely and updated as needed / often.
and a 3rd HD in Exfat for data transfers (or a thumb drive for the same thing to save $$)

How do i format a external hard drive?

i got a external hard drive to use as a back out. but i have no idea how to format the external HD. what should i do? how?
thank u

connect the hard drive to the mac
run disk utility (found in the applications/utilities directory)
the drive should be displayed in the lefthand pane of the disk utility window, click on it to select it
click the 'partition' tab, it should show the current format and allow you to alter it if necessary, for mac use the "mac os extended (journalled)" format
once you've formatted and/or partitoned the drive it is a good idea to go to the 'erase' tab and use it to write zeros to the disk

How do you format an External Hard Drive

I'm New to Mac. I have a Mac Book Pro Intel. I need to format an old PC hard drive so it works as an external drive. I have it in a enclosure and connected by firewire. The Mac reads it but can not write to it. Plus I don't even know if you format like I did in windows PC.
Mac Book Pro Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Hey,
Here is a great way on how to format your drive for Mac. You would need to choose the MS-DOS format.
To do this:
1. Go to Disk Utility
2. Find Your External HD on the left hand side and click on it
3. Go to the Erase panel
4. Choose the Volume Format as MS-DOS File System
5. Name the Drive if you wish
6. Erase
For a more graphical representation follow the link below:
Formatting an External HD (Note: In this case where it says "Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or Mac OS Extended" you would pick the MS-DOS option instead.)
This allows you to use your dirve with both OS's and having the option of writing and reading for both. If you have any important documents or things on your HD I would just copy them over into a folder on your internal HD and then when the drive is formatted, just shoot them back over.
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HT3275 How do you Format the external hard drive been used for time machine?

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ON an external hard drive.. that is easy.. just open disk utility and reformat it. Make sure you use Mac Extended Journeled. (HFS+)

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Another person said it had to do with the fact that the drive was 3TB. Whu...?
If anybody could help with this issue, I would be VERY grateful.

Thank you AnaMusic... this is a nice resource for information.
However I am still not sure I understand why I can't actually DO the partition/formatting. Any idea why the "Master Boot Record" is grayed out? That's the part that has me stymied. As far as I can tell I'm doing all of the required steps correctly.
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All you need to do is…
1) Connect the drive
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4) Click on Options… and chenge it from MBR to GUID Partition Table
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How can I use my external hard drive on my mac and a windows computer?

Hello,
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You will eventually use all of that 1TB external for the Time Machine backups, that is if you do regular Time Machine backups (It is NOT a One Time thing). So using that same external for anything else is not a good idea.
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How do I share an external hard drive with 3 macs

On my gmac, I have an external hard drive that all my itunes music/videos are being saved to. I would like to give the other macs access to the itunes music but can not seem to network it. I have no problem logging on to any of the three computers and sharing/using folders from each mac but I can not get the other two computers to see my external hard drive. I tried using SharePoints but the issue seems to be that the external hard drive shows up at the "computer" level, whereas the networking shows up at the internal hard drive level. I've searched all over the boards but can't seem to find anything that helps me with this particular situation. I am using a SeaGate external hard drive that is formated as FAT32.

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( Either format it to MS-DOS from the DIsk Utility, or install a tool such as MacDrive into Windows and keep the drive in its current format, or install the NTFS-3G driver into Mac OS X and format the drive to NTFS in Windows.)
I have a La Cie rugged poerable HD I want to copy media files from both my work Pc and my home mac to it, and then plug it into my TVIX machine ( windows based media player) to access the files. In simple terms, how do i do this?
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How do I format an external hard drive to be Mac OS Extended (Journaled)?

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