How to format a hard drive for Linux?

I have a hdd (500gb) that used to be my internal drive for my MBP 2012. It currently has Mac OS 10.10 and Ubuntu 14.04. I want to erase the drive though so I can make it strictly for Linux. The question is which format do I choose in disk utility. These are my options:
Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted)
Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled)
Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled, Encrypted)
MS-DOS (FAT)
ExFAT
Thanks in advance

Format it from the Linux installer. You cannot format it using Disk Utility because you cannot format a startup volume.

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

Hello,
I recently bought a Toshiba Hard-Drive with the following features:
500GB
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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 to format new hard drive for Apple TV when you can't use old HD

I need to know how to format a new HD to install in my Apple TV where I can't use the old HD to clone or otherwise create the new structure on the new HD.
I have an Apple TV that was syncing to a Mac Mini that had a defective HD and logic board. I was unable to backup the Apple TV to the Mac Mini for some time before I had the mini repaired by AppleCare.
When the mini came back, it registered on the Apple TV as a new computer and I couldn't sync with it without losing hundreds of dollars of content.
All was okay until the other night when Apple's defective update for the ATV erased ALL my content. I updated it to 3.1 this morning, which Apple indicated might fix the problem. It didn't. The old content is all gone.
My ATV is out of warranty, so I removed the old HD and copied the files from the "Purchased" folder to my mini. That saved most 101 items that I purchased since 12/08 (but not all for some reason). I lost all content prior to 12/08 that I purchased, as well as some content since 12/08 that I purchased.
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So, how does one do that? I'm not gifted with vast Unix knowledge or experience and I don't want to clone the old HD and risk losing more data if it writes to the HD for some reason.
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Hi Atagahi,
Firstly, have you emailed Apple iTunes support indicating your issue? There have been instances in which Apple will allow re-downloading of all content you've purchased on the iTunes store.
Secondly, I highly recommend you get an external usb hard drive, attach it to your mini and use it as a Time Machine drive to keep your iTunes purchases safe. It's a fact of life that all hard disk drives will eventually fail. The Apple TV should never be used as any kind of permanent storage space; think of it as a 'temporary holding' zone. And as you've unfortunately already experienced, a glitch wiped out all content on the Apple TV.
As regards your original question, it seems like there have been folks who've done just that...taken the internal drive in the Apple TV out and attached it to a mac and copied files from the Apple TV hard drive. I have not had to do such, so I cannot offer any help here except for Linda's suggestion on googling the net for solutions.
Good luck and hope you get all your purchased content back Atagahi!
Message was edited by: Alec

One Format External Hard Drive for Your Mac and PC...

I have Formatted my External HD Passport 500GB = (465.8) and split it in two partition Mac OS Extended (Journal = 232GB) and FAT32 (Ms-Dos-FAT = 232GB) and reformat to NTFS using Windows...
How to use one External HUD for your Mac and PC you have a PC and how to have two Partition in Mac OS Extended (Journal) and FAT (Ms-Dos-FAT)as you desire the size of your partition under application, Utilities and Disk Utility and covert the (FAT32) to (NTFS)using Windows Control Panel or just search by Start, search Computer Management or just right my Computer and format the second partition to (NTFS)
Tips for Mac OS Extended (Journaled) FAT32 vs NTFS, what works and don't work...
(1)Mac OS Extended (Journaled) Partition can't be use in Windows to transfer files but NTFS Partition can be use in Mac by transferring file from Windows to Mac and NTFS support for files over 4G in size...
(2)FAT32 can be use in Mac and Windows but with a limitation that a file cannot be transferred to a FAT32 partition if the file is larger than 4GB such as a video file and FAT32 file system performs more slowly than NTFS...
(2)Mac OS Extended (Journaled) can be use in Windows when you Reformat your HD to HFS+ by third-party app such as http://www.macdrive.com/ MacDrive for $50.or http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/ NTFS For Mac 6.0 for $30...
Reference link 1 External Hard Drive for Your Mac and PC...
http://www.myfirstmac.com/index.php/mac/articles/1-external-hard-drive-for-your- mac-and-pc
Best regards...
JamesUFOs...
http://www.youtube.com/user/JamesEBEs

I have many external drives I use between my MacBook Pro and my Windows PC's. I use a free NTFS driver for Mac OS-X to give me full read/write access to any NTFS formatted partitions when running Mac OS. I also use MediaFour's MacDrive v8 on some of my Windows PC's to access any HFS+ formatted partitions.
Most of my drives are formatted NTFS because I have more Windows machines than I have MacDrive licenses, and with the driver for Mac OS, they are fully accessible. I have a few drives I do keep formatted as HFS+ because I have encountered an app or two that don't work quite right when they don't get to write to files on an HFS+ partition (one of my backup programs is picky about this).
As said before, FAT32 is fully accessible between the two OS'es but it also has it's own limitations.

How big of a hard drive for 15" G4 667

I have a 15" G4 667 and it has a 30gb... how big of a hard drive can i install in it... i would like to install a 160gb

Hi, letmeno. If your 667MHz Powerbook has a DVI video-out port, it will format a nominal 160GB drive to its actual capacity (about 149GB) and use it happily, without any other limitations.
If you have the 667MHz model with a VGA video-out port, only 127-128GB of a 160GB drive can be recognized in it, and the last 20GB of the drive's actual capacity will be unavailable. Partitioning the drive has no effect on this hardware limitation.
A 120GB drive (the next size down) has a formatted capacity in any machine of about 111GB, so a 160GB drive actually provides a significant increase even in a Powerbook that can't use the whole drive. If you have the VGA model, and the difference between 111GB and 128GB is worth the difference in price between a 120 and a 160GB drive to you, go ahead and install a 160. Otherwise, even a 120 would certainly be a huge improvement over a 30.
If you do buy a 160, any later Powerbook or other recent Mac model will be able to reformat it to its full capacity. Whenever you move on to a newer Mac, you can just mount the 160 in an external enclosure for continued use, put the 30 back into the Tibook, and sell it or give it away.

Formatting External Hard Drive for Backup

Please advise: how should I set up an external hard drive (WD 500GB MyBook Home Edition) with a view to using it to backup my MacBook with Time Machine and have partitions to be accessed by Windows: 1) through BootCamp, running Windows Vista (Business) on the MacBook and 2) an external PC running Windows XP? I intend to set up partitions for: 1) Time Machine (GUID); 2) a 30GB MS-DOS (FAT-32) partition for Windows Vista (on the MacBook); 3) another 30GB MS-DOS (FAT-32) partition for Windows XP (to back up the old desktop); 4) another 30GB MS-DOS (FAT-32) partition to back up photos and video clips; 5) yet another 30GB MS-DOS (FAT-32) partition (The last one, at last!) to back up music and leave some spare room. That should leave me about 350GB for incremental Time Machine backups. (The hard drive on this MacBook is 150GB, 88GB of which is currently dedicated to OSX, with the other 60GB used by Windows.)
I don't use virtual machines or any other software to access operating systems - just reboot through BootCamp. Eventually, I intend to phase out Windows as all my old stuff - more than twenty years' worth of it - gets made redundant by the MacBook. I've had the MacBook for nearly a year now, so feel confident that it will replace the PC's. As you may imagine, however, making twenty-odd years' worth of stuff redundant is not an overnight process. I don't think I have any files of more than 4GB, nor do I expect to acquire any on the PC's, so can't foresee problems with FAT-32's limitations. I understand external PC's can have trouble seeing FAT-32 partitons on hard drives sharing partitions formatted in GUID.
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Your computer has USB 1.1 ports; using an external USB hard drive for any purpose other than as a bootable Mac OS X backup will work, but you should choose a FireWire drive if possible, as transmission speeds are much faster. A drive does not need to be bootable if you're only going to back up documents, such as your photos, to it; it only needs to be bootable if you intend to use it to help troubleshoot future issues with the internal drive.
You should use the Disk Utility in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder to reformat the drive in the Mac OS Extended format prior to backing up items to it, and this is required for a bootable backup.
(21126)

How to format your hard drive

How do I for mat my hard drive

Before doing anything why do you need to format your hard drive?
Drive Erase for Snow Leopard and Earlier
1. Boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
If you are preparing an external or a non-startup drive, then open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select the volume you wish to format from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
3. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Erase button and wait until the process has completed.
Drive Erase for Lion/Mountain Lion
1. Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button. Select Disk Utility from the main menu and click on the Continue button.
2. After DU loads select the volume you wish to erase from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
3. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Erase button and wait until the process has completed.

Transfer photos from PC to Mac - how to format ext hard drive?

Hi, I'd like to transfer jpegs from my old PC to my new Mac. I had already put my files on an external hard drive but when I plugged it into the Mac, it couldn't read it. I got a prompt to re-format it, which I did not do.
From reading discussions here, it looks like I first need to format a hard drive on my Mac, then copy the files from the PC, then transfer to the Mac? But the explanation is over my head - could anyone explain how to do it in plain terms? Thanks so much!

Hi there, if you want both OS's to read the external drive, format it as FAT32. I would do this from your PC as I have had problems with a PC not being able to read a drive formatted by the MAC. There are also other alternative. Or there is a third party alternative called Macfuse using the NTFS-3G plugin.
It is a free opensource project that allows your MAC to read and write to a NTFS drive. So you could actually connect your PC's drive to the Mac and get whatever you need or add.
Hope this helps,
Glynn

Formatting a Hard Drive for RAID 5

Hey everyone,
I'm a bit new to RAID formatting. I understand how it works, but I want to make sure I'm formatting correctly.
We are looking to format a 12TB drive for RAID 5 for optimal space, speed and safety.
In Disk Utility, I am selecting 5 partitions, but how to I format EACH partition? Should they all be Mac OS Extended (Journaled)?
The manual that came with my drive (OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2) wasn't much of a help. Maybe you are!
Thanks in advance

By the way, we are attempting to format RAID 5 to 4 disks.

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/

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 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.

Step by Step how to re-format portable hard drive for pc and MAC

Using a Mac book pro with Lion OS Any help with this would be appreciated .

TXNgage wrote:
Using a Mac book pro with Lion OS Any help with this would be appreciated .
Easy.
You should format the drive on the PC.
For most compatability and for any files under 4GB in size format in Windows FAT32 (MSDOS on Mac)
For any sized files 4GB or more, then format exFAT in Windows.
If your running a Windows XP machine, search Microsoft for a free download and install exFAT for XP.
FAT or exFAT can both be read and written too by Mac's and PC's alike.
Most drives come from the factory already formatted FAT, if this is what you want then there is nothng you need to do.
If Windows asks to format the drive then choose FAT or exFAT, but not NTFS.
A bit harder, if you have no choice but to format the drive on the Mac, then open Apple's Disk Utility and hook up the drive, select tthe drive on the far right, it should be obvious with the drive makers name and size, select that it's on the far left.
Now select Partition Tab, Options: MBR, format: MSDOS (FAT) or exFAT and click apply.
that's it, but I suggest you format on the PC for better results.

How do I format a hard drive for powermac g5

My hard drive seems to have a problem. It won't boot but when I put the installer disk in, it won't allow me to install to the hd. I have osx 10

10.6 or higher will not install on a PowerMac.
10.5 will only install on PowerMacs with a G4 867 Mhz or higher or 1 Ghz or higher if it is a retail installer.
That means MacBook, Mac Pro, Mac Mini, and iMac installer discs will not work on it. The retail 10.5 installer must look like:
If it is 10.5, and not say Upgrade, Dropin, or OEM on it.
Early G5s came with 10.2.7 or later, and those G5s could install 10.3 retail, or 10.4 retail as well:
Some though could only install 10.4 or 10.5, or 10.4.6 or 10.5 retail outside of their original discs. Macs can't install operating systems older than they shipped with.
Note Classic compatibility is gone with Mac OS X 10.5. That means, you can't use original Mac OS 9 applications on the hard drive with 10.5 installed. If you have the original discs, you can install Classic together with anything up to 10.4.11 on a separate Firewire or internal SATA hard drive.
Use http://www.everymac.com/ to determine the age of your PowerMac, and tell us, and then figure out if you were using the wrong installer.

Need help to partition and format new hard drive for T400

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Does anyone have any suggestions how to get this up and running?
One other question is - (assuming I can get the thing working) - Is there somewhere I can load the operating system on part of the hard drive where it can act as a fall back in case the operating system gets corrupted? - i.e. something that can't get attacked by malicious software?
Thanks in advance for any assistance.
Ian

Hi irivlin,
If you are trying to clean install XP, then you have to do following setting in BIOS first:
Press F1 to BIOS, Config -> Serial ATA (SATA) -> change to "Compatibility"
You can change XP partition only if you are doing clean installation, otherwise you have to use 3rd party to do it.
For backup part, there are lots of choices in the market. You might consider using XP own backup function. Lenovo got a program called Rescue and Recovery can also do backup as well.
How to use the Backup utility to back up files and folders in Windows XP Home Edition
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/320820/en-us
Rescue and Recovery® 4.23 by Lenovo
http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/product-and-parts/detail.page?&LegacyDocID=MIGR-76225
Fred
T61 + X201i

How to format a hard drive for Linux?

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