How do I format Windows hard drive to Mac OSX?

I have a 120gig hard drive that was just pulled from a Windows XP PC that I'd like to install in my G4. It does not allow me to install Mac OSX right from the first step from booting with a MacOSX install CD. It gives me an alert that says "The software cannot be installed in this computer" then asks me to Restart or Start Up Disk. Start Up Disk does not activate. Thanks for your help.
Message was edited by: doublesie

You can use FireWire Target Disk Mode on the iMac to mount the iMac's hard drive on the iBook's desktop. Then use the iBook to do the installation.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58583
Note: If the iBook is currently using that same Mac OS X license, installing it on another Mac concurrently is not legal.

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How do i reformat my hard drive on mac mini late 2011 with yosemite before selling my mac

how do i reformat my hard drive on mac mini late 2011 with yosemite before selling my mac

You can't legally sell or give away that computer with Yosemite installed.
Before you sell or give away your computer, in addition to the steps listed in this support article, take these steps:
1. Run Apple Diagnostics or the Apple Hardware Test. The buyer will do this (or he should), and you don't want to be surprised by the results.
2. Reset the PRAM and the SMC, which might contain personal information.
3. If you set a firmware password, remove it by running Firmware Password Utility in Recovery mode.
4. If you activated FileVault in OS X 10.7 or later, turn it off.
5. If you use Boot Camp, the partition must be deleted.
6. If you created any other data partitions on the internal drive, remove them in Disk Utility.
7. If the machine has an internal hard drive, erase the one remaining data partition with the option to zero out data. An SSD doesn't need to be zeroed.
You can't legally or practically transfer any software downloaded from the Mac App Store to the new owner of the machine, even if it was free. That includes OS X, so if you upgraded to OS X 10.7 or later, you must reinstall an older OS, either from the installation media, if applicable, or by starting up in Internet Recovery mode (option-command-R at the startup chime.) If you installed from physical media, deliver those to the new owner.
If you're selling the machine, or donating it in working order, and it originally shipped with OS X 10.4 or 10.5, then you have the option of installing either from the discs that came with it or from a retail Snow Leopard disc (which you must then transfer to the buyer.) The buyer should understand that if he doesn't get the original discs from you, he won't get the bundled iLife applications or the Apple Hardware Test. Replacements for the original discs can be ordered from Apple.
The new owner will have to redownload any software that came from the App Store, including OS X upgrades, under his or her Apple ID. If you ever updated the bundled iLife applications (Garage Band, iMovie, and iPhoto) through the App Store, you can't transfer those either. The buyer will have to purchase them.
Remove the machine from your list of registered products. If it's still covered by an AppleCare Protection Plan, transfer the coverage to the new owner by following the instructions in the AppleCare Terms and Conditions (under the heading "Transfer of Plan.")

How can i format my hard drive

how do i format the hard drive

Format hard drive on what? I note from your profile you have a Dell Dimension 4600 Windows XP without any Apple hardware listed! It is just possible that you are asking your question on the wrong site.

How to Format Toshiba Hard-Drive for Mac with Parallels?

Hello,
I recently bought a Toshiba Hard-Drive with the following features:
500GB
It is a Canivo Basics 3.0
It is USB 3.0 and 2.0 portable hard drive
It has already been formatted NTFS for Windows XP, Vista, 7, and 8
The box says that it can be reformatted for Mac
I have a Macbook Pro with Retina Display that I bought this year in late March/early April.
It runs OS X Mavericks, and Parallels Desktop 9 for Mac.
I would like to reformat it so that I can use it on my laptop both with Windows and Mac OS at the same time. I do not wish to use a partition as I want to access the hard drive through Mac and Windows at the same time on my laptop and I also want to be able to access the Mac things on a Windows computer and vice versa.
I have never formatted a hard drive before, and I would like to use a completely safe software, or no software at all, if it is possible.
I am sorry but I don't have a very high knowledge of this.
Thanks,
Sandy-Wood

It would be easier, using Parallels, just to format the drive for "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". You can see it both in the Windows/Parallels and the Mac side. Leaving it formatted as NTFS is not going to allow you to access (write to) the drive unless you use third-party software. Formatting it for Mac lets you use it, as I said, on both the Parallels VM and the Mac side.
If you were using Boot Camp, I would advise leaving it formatted as NTFS and purchasing NTFS for Mac to access the drive on both OS's. You can mitigate that by formatting the drive for Mac:
Good luck,
Clinton

How do I format the hard drive on my Imac without losing the applications etc?

I am fairly new to mac computers. and was wondering if there is anyone out there who could help. I have an Imac running Snow Leopard which is becoming very slow in starting up. I want to format the hard drive but still want to retain the applications etc already on the Imac. Can I just time machine the computer then insert thte OS disk which will format the hard drive? Will this give me a better start up time?
Many thanks in advance.

If you format the hard drive, you'll lose all your data. You can make a Time Machine backup, format the disk and restore from the backup only what you need

How to partition 120 GB hard drive MacBook for OSX+Win (BC+Par.)? Fat/NFTS?

After many happy years with my PowerBook G4 12" (I will miss it definitely, as compact and cute as it is ;-() I'll now switch to a new MacBook 2.16 GHz with 2 GB RAM and a 120 GB hard drive.
I will have to use Windows (not yet sure if XP or Vista), as I need special software not available for the Mac, so my choice will be Parallels, so that I can work in Os X and at the same time use those Windows Apps I need.
However, I also want to be able to boot Windows-only with BootCamp, so I already learned I have to install Windows on its own partition.
So my question is:
How shall I partition the hard drive?
* If I have one big partition for OSX + documents and the rest (maybe 30 or 40 GB) for Windows, I won't be able to access my documents from Windows, right?
* So I would have to keep the data I want to access from within Windows on a PC formatted partition (if I don't want to pay for a software like MacDrive)?
Or can Windows running in Parallels read from a HFS partition?
* Does this mean: if I want to access (read and write) my documents in OSX and Windows, I have to keep them on a Fat32 partition?
-> This could be the partition where Windows is installed (but I'm not sure if I feel comfortable with that solution) of I would need a 3rd partition (Fat32) for data which would cause quite a big "segmentation" of the hard drive.
How did you resolve this problem?
Unfortunately, I don't see that I could really "separate" data I only have to access from Windows and those I only want to access in OS X, so in my opinion for me they all have to be in one place.
Looking forward to your comments,
Martin
MacBook 2.16 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 120 GB HD (white) Mac OS X (10.4.9)

You should probably ask all your Boot Camp quesitons in the Boot Camp discussions:
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1165
And your Parallels questions in the Parallels forums:
http://forums.parallels.com

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 NAS hard drive as Mac OS Extended HFS+

I just got a NAS enclosure for my home LAN and two SATA hard drives to fit.
Installed fine, even using the Windows-oriented browser interface installation.
The drives show up nicely in the finder, and some files copy over without difficulty. HOWEVER, some don't. I'm pretty sure that the problem is that the install utility formatted the hard drives in Windows format, because the files that they will not now accept are ones with Windows-disallowed filenames, such as those with long filenames or Windows-illegal characters.
SO:-
I suspect that my problem would be solved if I could re-format the drives in the NAS enclosure to Mac OS Extended HFS+ format. BUT, the Windows-oriented installation utility provided by the NAS manufacturer (Linksys -- don't believe them when they glibly say their NAS boxes are Mac-compatible!) doesn't offer Mac formatting.
And unfortunately, while the NAS drives show up nicely in my Mac finders (both 10.3.9 and 10.5.5), they don't appear in Disk Utility, which is where I usually go to format hard disks.
SO:
Is there a way to format a NAS disk in Mac format over my home LAN?
As a workaround, i could try temporarily installing the SATA drives internally in my G4 and format them that way, then put them back in the NAS enclosure. But it would be a bit of a kluge, and I'd have to re-transplant them every time I needed to undertake disk maintenance.
Any ideas, anyone? Thanks v. much.

Thank you for your response. I was able to successfully format the drives Extended journaled when they were out of the raid configuration. I was not able to format as Extended (not journaled) in the Raid configuration.

Renaming Windows Hard drive on Mac Desktop

I need help with this one....
I've successfully partitioned my hard drive with bootcamp, but when I open up my mac, it has saved the windows hard drive on my desktop as "Unknown"....how can I change it ??? (i would like to name it Windows HD)
I have tried twice by redoing the whole bootcamp partitioning setup, but I couldn't find anywhere where I would be able to change the name....
Thanks for the help!

Do it in Windows. Although I hadn't renamed mine until I read your post, I wanted to see HOW to do it, and the only way I was able to was within Windows itself. So just boot into windows and change it using the process required for windows os.
Once in windows, all you should have to do is highlight the drive in question, then right click on it, scroll down to "Rename" and call it what you want. Once you do that, when you boot into OS X it will changed there as well. Hope this helps.

How do i partition external hard drive using mac

how do i partition my external hard drive on mac? can i use it as time machine disk as well as external drive?

You can use an external disk for store files and for Time Machine, but you have to create a second volume.
To create volumes on the external disk, use Disk Utility. See > http://pondini.org/OSX/DU3.html I recommend you to put as much space as you can for the Time Machine volume, because backups consume a lot and Time Machine starts deleting backups when the external disk is full

Formatting external hard drive for MAC and Windows

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).
So short answer to your question is yes. It is possible and as the above person said, you need to format to Fat32. Long answer is it will take some time and effort. Here are a few links to help you get started:
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
I haven't tried any of these (I believe I formatted mine downloading a third party app), but you might be lucky. Good luck.

How do I format a hard drive for data recovery?

Hi,
My intel iMac got written over with a bootable Windows XP. So I hooked up my sister's Powerbook PPC and in target disk mode I'm running File Salvage which is finding hundreds of thousands of files.
Just ordered a G-Tech Quadra 500GB drive from Apple which is supposed to arrive Thursday. For now I'm going to save the File Salvage findings and then import them back to my sister's laptop to move to my new hard drive.
I've never owned an external drive so a few questions. Do I need to format the drive first and if so how? Do I then need to load OSX Tiger onto the new drive? If so how do I do that? Am I using the OSX install on my sister laptop and booting that to my external drive? Or am I putting my intel version of OSX in my iMac and booting that to the external drive? A little confused how this all works.
Can I partition the drive later on since I'll need at least 160GB to store all the files that File Salvage finds from my iMac.
Ideally I'd like to partition the drive load Tiger on there and transfer over my files from one partition to the Tiger partition to make sure everything is intact first before doing and erase and install on my iMac. Is this possible and if so how? Which Tiger disk would I use the Powerbook or the iMac one?
S.

spiralgirl wrote:
I got my drive and am about to partition but notice it's already been formatted at the factory but instead of being 500 GB it's like 465.5 GB and says that 180.8 MB have been used and there are 4 folders and 10 files when I look at the drive itself in Disk Utility.
You are experiencing the "myth of the megabyte." Consider my MacBook Pro's "160 GB" hard drive. Disk Utility reports that the Total Capacity is "149.1 GB (160,041,885,696 Bytes)." See the trick: The size, when expressed in billions of bytes is less than the capacity expressed in GB, because each conversion from bytes to kilobytes (kB) to MB to GB involves a factor of 1/1024 (remember, this is binary math).
So, scaling from my MacBook's internal drive:
500 "GB" x 149 GB / 160 "GB" = 466 GB
sounds like your drive is just about right.
I doubled clicked the drive and see nothing inside so not sure why it's saying 10 files and 4 folders.
Spotlight, Trash, and other "housekeeping" functions create hidden files. I don't understand why they would be taking up so much space on an empty drive (181 MB), but that won't matter once you repartition.
Should I erase the drive first before partitioning it? Or just go ahead an partition?
The process of partitioning, which is followed by formatting (see my previous post) will obliterate anything left on the drive (beyond the physical demarcation of sectors necessary for the drive to operate).
So, if there is nothing on the drive to be preserved, you may proceed immediately.
Please write back to let us know how things went.
Message was edited by: Steve Davidson

How do I format second hard drive?

i just installed a new Seagate Serial ATA 400GB hard drive. Now I can't figure out what to do in disk utility to format it - I see it in the first aid window, but what do I have to do to start using it? I was thinking I would see a second icon on my desktop, but I just have my macintosh HD ... how do I start saving things / moving things to the new HD?

That was helpful - mac speak and all - but a few more questions before I hit the button ( just want to make sure i am not about to blow up my computer. under Volume Scheme I have the option of selecting anywhere from 1 - 16 partitions. Since I have no idea what this means ( must be mac speak - me no comprende) what should I be chosing. Then I see I can name it ( I think I can handle this part - I am somewhat creative and "name" is lingo I understand), then I see format ( I am guessing Mac OS Extended - Journaled) and size 372.61 ( I am guessing this is the right one, since the other is 74.5 - although I am sure there is a long explanation I wouldn't understand in my simple mind why these numbers don't match the numbers on the box ( like 400GB HD), but I digress... Now when I click "partition" a warning comes up that says something like "by doing this you will erase everything on this drive blah blah blah" which terrifies me cause it sounds like it translates as "you had better make sure you know what you are doing cuz one false move and are about to erase the all contents of the last three years of your life"...
So, am I on the right track?

HT1338 How can I format my hard drive without installation disk?

Guys I am using Mac with OS X 10.6.5. How can I format hard drive without the installation disk?
I don't have a installation disk can I buy one? where?

Call Apple Sales at 1-800-692-7753 to order 10.6.
Posts concerning 10.6 should be made in 10.6 usage forum.
You posted in the 10.3 and down forum which is very old OSX software.
DALE

How can I format external hard drive for both Mac

Hi, I want to use my Seagate external Hard Drive 1 TB on both Mac & Windows. I go to know that FAT 32 supports both but it can not transfer more than 4 GB data at a time. Is there some better alternative? Please suggest.

As said above Use exFAT but do the formatting on a Windows PC as I have had problems of Windows seeing the drive when done on a Mac. Once done on a PC it was seen by both platforms.
Also if you are running XP on the PC you may need an update for XP to see and use exFAT drives. It may be included with XP SP3, i'm not sure, but Microsoft has an update for both XP SP2 and SP3 so that exFAT drives are usable.

How do I format Windows hard drive to Mac OSX?

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