I want to backup my photos to a WD My Passport, and also have a PC in the house. Is it okay to format the external hard drive to FAT 32?

Want to back up/save my photos to an external hard drive both for safety and for portability. I use an iMac, but everyone else in the family uses PC, so ideally I'd like to be able to use the drive on both systems. I have been looking online and it looks like FAT32 may be the answer. As I'm sure you can tell I am new to all this and just wanted to check that formatting the My Passport to this format will be agreeable to the Apple operating system. I have an iMac, iPad 3 and iPhone 5, if this makes any difference.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Alex

I would use a FAT 32 filesystem only for files you will be sharing with Windows.  It is an old, feature-poor filesystem.  Of course that excludes any application files that are not Windows compatible (including Time Machine...).  You should not think of it as a backup drive.
I would backup all the files on your internal drive onto a separate drive using Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner.  It is easier an safer to backup everthing. Also, maintining more than one backup is prudent so have at least two backup disks.  See this thread for more extensive backup advice.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5377719?tstart=480
Disks are inexpensive. Losing your data is not.
For FAT32 characteristics see: http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_vs_fat.htm

Similar Messages

  • HT3275 When I press "select backup location" in the Time Machine section of System Preferences, my external hard drive doesn't appear as an option.  How do I change this?

    When I press "select backup location" in the Time Machine section of System Preferences, my external hard drive doesn't appear as an option.  How do I change this?  My external hard drive is a FreeAgent GoFlex Drive.

    Hi, what Format is the external Drive?
    They usually come PC Formatted for Fat32/MSdos, or NTFS... is there anything on it now?
    How to format your disks...
    http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/partitioning_tiger.html
    (To Install OSX on an IntelMac the Drive it needs the GUID Partitioning scheme mentioned at the bottom.)
    Thanks to Pondini, Formatting,  Partitioning, Verifying,  and  Repairing  Disks...
    http://Pondini.org/OSX/DU.html

  • Which format for external hard drive to use with time machine backup and connect to windows laptop?

    Hi!  I have an external hard drive on which I have transferred my iTunes library (just mine - not others).  I have also a folder containing just films (some but not all of which are in iTunes too)  Everything has been working just fine until yesterday I noticed that Time Machine was not including the external hard drive in back up as it wasn't formatted.  So I have moved everything back to the Mac hard drive and and ready to format the external hard drive - but understand that if I do the contents cannot be opened from a windows laptop ...  is that right?  Is there are format I could choose that would allow Time Machine to back up and allow Windows to open as well (the idea being that I take the external hard drive with me on holidays etc!!)  Many thanks for any advice. 

    ok - I understand.  I have managed so far to format the drive (on windows) to exFAT file system - which apparently works with both Windows and Mac - but you're  correct - it will not be included in time machine backup as I have checked the back up files and Samsung is not showing.  Reckon I'm onto having to buy yet another portable hard drive just for windows - or of course buy myself a new mac book!!  Can I ask you please - does the drive have to be clear of everything before I change the format - or can I change it with the files still in there?  Also, got any quick ways duplicating the files onto another External Hard drive (for use on the windows laptop)  At the moment the files are taking 2/3 hours + to copy over!  Thank you! 

  • What formatting for external hard drives for my photo students?

    I teach digital photography. Our classroom Macs are a mix of Intel and PPC (iMac 20", G5s). My students typically either come with a Mac laptop, buy one while here, or soon after they leave. Some (few!) have a PC laptop or will leave to go home to a PC laptop.
    I've been buying one external harddrive per student (with FW800, FW400, USB 2.0, 250 GB) from macsales.com for students to put their digital photos on while here and when they leave my 12 wk. course. I encourage them if they have a Mac laptop to partition their external drive to have one partition for backing up their boot drive, one for their photos.
    In the classroom, they may be hooking up their external drive to a PPC or Intel Mac.
    What recommendations can you give for what formatting they should be using for their external drives? Intel, for PPC, or...MS-DOS (if they go to a PC)? (One student told me that her external drive which was formated for PPC last summer now won't show up on her MacBook Pro.)
    I realize they can only use the FW800 on a few Macs (including 17" MacBook Pro, Mac Pro), and should not be using USB 2.0 for a drive they hope to boot a Mac with. I've heard formatting and using MS-DOS is very unstable (for PCs at least).
    Tips, please?
    2x2.66 GHz Mac Pro   Mac OS X (10.4.9)   5 GB RAM

    I've been buying one external harddrive per student
    (with FW800, FW400, USB 2.0, 250 GB) from
    macsales.com for students to put their digital photos
    on while here and when they leave my 12 wk. course. I
    encourage them if they have a Mac laptop to partition
    their external drive to have one partition for
    backing up their boot drive, one for their photos.
    That's impressive and very user-supportive. At work, our students have space on our server to backup/store their work for the semester but are greatly encouraged to backup their stuff with either Cds or DVDs (and we don't supply those). If they use a personal machine, they are responsible for their own backups of their system.
    In the classroom, they may be hooking up their
    external drive to a PPC or Intel Mac.
    For data, the traditional APM formatted drive work with both.
    What recommendations can you give for what formatting
    they should be using for their external drives?
    Intel, for PPC, or...MS-DOS (if they go to a PC)?
    (One student told me that her external drive which
    was formated for PPC last summer now won't show up
    on her MacBook Pro.)
    As I mentioned earlier, an Intel Mac can boot from an APM formatted drive although this may or may not be the best solution. Unfortunately with partitioning via Disk Utility (and perhaps other tools as well - I've not investigated this yet), every partition must be of the same scheme GUID or APM.
    The most important reason for backups (IMHO) is to safeguard personal work. The OS can be re-installed anytime and settings reconfigured if need be. Since the APM scheme can be used by both Intels and PPC for data, I would go with APM. Bootable or not, their important data will be backed up.
    (I don't know why one student had a problem but it shouldn't be related to the partition scheme.)
    For a bootable system/backup, I use Carbon Copy Cloner from Mike Bombich. Ideally, so long as there is space, I create a restorable image of a fresh OS install and put it away for a rainy day. I then clone my entire internal drive to the external (APM). Over the last year, I've been able to boot from it on my original iMac CD as well as have a hard copy of my work.
    Once backed up, I would later use the option to only copy changed files instead of re-doing the entire drive. That was a feature in the PPC version of the app (which will run under Intel) although I haven't tried the latest universal version (3.0 beta). There are a number of other applications that can perform backups/cloning as well.

  • I was thinking about formatting my external hard drive into two partitions. HFS  for time machine backup

    I really want to format my MacBook after I back up and have it clean like a new machine. And I was wondering if I need to back up after a couple of months will Time Machine back it up as a new computer or will it overwrite?
    Also if I do 250GB HFS+ partition for time machine & 250GB NTFS/FAT32 to use with windows. Can the HFS+ partition be used to save files from MacBook using drag & drop? I.E. without using time machine?

    A data recovery specialist or some data recovery programs should be able to help.  Most format simply rewrite the directory tree saying no files are on this disk.  The bits that represent the files are still flipped appropreiately so they still exists, you just don't have the location info to get at them.  Secure formats and erases rewrite each bit to a zero or 1 or random so the data is then truely gone.  This type of format takes a long time to complete.
    I'm not making a recomendation of a particular program but here is one company that does what you ask:
    http://www.remosoftware.com/mac-recovery  The cost is pretty high but I'm sure they don't sell many copies and need to cover their development costs.
    Good luck and don't write anything on the freshly formatted disk until you decide what to do.

  • I get an error message when I try to empty the trash in order to clear up an external hard drive.  I had been using it for time machine, have shifted that to a larger external hard drive, and want to free up the space for photographs.  Any suggestions?

    What should I do when I get an error message (error code - 8003) when I'm trying to empty the trash to clear up additional space on an external hard drive? 

    Yes. And you should not have moved that folder. Put it back. To move your iTunes library move the folder from User's Music.
    tt2

  • I formatted an external hard drive to my macbook to use for time machine.  I now want to "unformat" it so I can use it as a transfer device (large flash drive).  How do I do it??

    Explains it all ^

    1. Connect the External HD and open Disk Utility in your Utilities Folder.
    2. Highlight the external HD in the list of drives and select the Partition tab.
    3. Under Partition Layout select 1 Partition and click on the Options... button.
    4. Select Master Boot Record in the drop down window and click OK.
    5. Set the Format: to MS-DOS (FAT), name it and click the Apply button.
    6. Click the Partition button.

  • Transferring photos from CF card to external hard drive

    Such a dumb basic question.  New mac user, huge learning curve. Could transfer photos in my sleep on my pc. Cant use the usual drag and drop motions here. Do NOT want to load my new mac with thousands of pics (im a photographer) I JUST want to transfer them from my CF card to my external hard drive (yes, I can see them both on my desktop). PLEASE help meeee

    What format is the EHD formatted as, I suspect it may be NFS which is a PC format. NFS drives can be read by OS X but OS X cannot write to them. If this is the case either re-format the drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or purchase a new EHD and format it correctly. I suspect you may not know how to format, if not here are some instructions:
    http://osxdaily.com/2012/01/04/format-an-external-hard-drive-or-usb-flash-drive- for-mac-os-x/
    In addition you should be backing up your computer using Time Machine, TM will also backup EHD's that are formatted for OS X. It will not back up PC formatted EHDs. If you are unfamiliar with TM please book mark and use:
    http://www.apple.com/support/timemachine/

  • External hard drive and backup

    I just got a 750GB external hard drive that I need to format and/or partition and I am not sure what the best way to do this is. We just had the power source fail on the imac and, fortunately the hard drive is ok. I have saved my picture folders, idvd movies & itunes playlists to another external hard drive by exporting them. I am just wondering what the best thing is to do with this external hard drive. This is the only mac we have in the house, we have a pc & compaq laptop, when we had the imac in the shop I couldn't get to the pictures on the external hard drive because it was formatted with the mac. Do I want to clone the hard disk? Do I want to partition it? I still want to save my pictures, movies & itunes on this, is that possible also? If so, do I export these folders to the External HD or is there a backup utility I can use? Is there a way that I can save the pictures so that I can access them on the mac and on the pc if I needed to? Any advice or suggestions would be great. Thanks.

    If I make a clone of my old drive, does this also copy folders (pictures, music, adobe...)?
    A clone makes a full duplicate of everything that is on the one drive to the other.
    Is this something that I would need to update and if so, how often?
    Yes, but how often depends upon how much you change your files and how much you are willing to lose if your backup is out of date. A main drive failing is unpredictable. The extreme version of this is having a RAID where the minute you make a change that change is copied to backup drives almost as you do it.
    Do I also do a separate backup? I understand that it would be best to have 2 copies of my pictures. I would like to have these on discs as well as the external hard drive, but I have thousands of pictures because I take tons at my children's sporting events. It would take so many cds or dvds, but that is what I will do, unless someone has a different suggestion.
    One can write pages and pages on backup philosophies.
    Backing up to CD/DVD is almost impractical these days due to the size of data and relatively small capacity of optical discs. That said, I do have things backed up to DVD. Files I know are never going to change (photos, other multimedia). I bought high-quality archival grade DVDs for this purpose. Price per GB though, hard drives are cheaper and easier.
    Having multiple backups is not a bad idea. Let's say you keep one backup drive by your computer so it is handy for a daily backup. Somebody steals your computer and backup, well all is gone. Have a weekly 2nd backup stored in the garage somewhere then you still have most of your data.

  • Photos. They are on my macBook, backed up on time machine. Copied them (hours and hours) to external hard drive. They are now in alphabetical order (19,000  of them) NOT IN THEIR EVENTS or date order-and have been taken with different cameras- help!!!!!!

    Photos.
    They are on my macBook, backed up on time machine. There are 19,000+ of them, some rescued from a pc crash- which I used the nifty iPhoto to put back into date order.    
    I want to take them all off my laptop, now............as I need to use it for WORK!!
    Copied them (hours and hours) to another external hard drive.
    They are now in alphabetical order (all 19,000+ of them) NOT IN THEIR EVENTS or date order. (-They have also been taken with different cameras over the years and some of the generic camera numbering remains.)
    I have tried to copy them (only a few as an experiment)  one event at a time, but that again "opens up" the Event "folder" and tips them out as individuals and therefore just lists image letters and numbers alphabetically.
    How can I copy
    the whole library still in  "Events" to an external hard drive?
    the folders/albums I have already made on to this hard drive?
    and how can I add to this back up monthly, again keeping events and folders separate and updated?
    Mac is so user friendly - there must be a way.........
    Thanks

    UPDATE : I have re-installed from disk, various apps that were no longer functioning such as iLife, iWork etc. So, I now can access my photos again.
    Also, I had to re-install all the software for my printer ( Stylus Pro 4880 ) and reset it so the printer is working again.
    Photoshop CS4 won't open. I think I will have to get in touch with Adobe as basically, I guess they have a built-in "blocker" which prevents me from opening the app as the license is for only 1 user and having re-installed the OS, there are now, in effect, 2 users ( Me and Me 1, I think ).
    So, having added on a new external HD, Time Machine has made a copy of most of the files, folders, apps etc onto the external HD. The internal HD is still nearly full ( 220 GBs out of 232 GBs ).
    I am guessing the way to go now in order to free up space on the internal HD is to delete/trash older photos from my iPhoto library and hope that if needed, I will be able to access them on the external HD.
    Am I correct ? Please advise before I do something I will regret.
    Thanks, Sean.

  • Can i put my photos on my external hard drive and still open them in iPhoto

    I am an amateur photographer and an art teacher and i have thousands of photos and music files on my computer that i would much rather put on my external hard drive so they dont take up so much room on my computer. I would like to extend the life of my computer as long as possible and want to keep as much memory free on the actual computer as i can. is there a way for me to put my pictures and or music on my external hard drive and still have it open regularly like it does now in iphoto or itunes?

    they are backed up but there are thousands of them i have a small business selling my photos online and i was wondering if i could put them on the external hd and still have them open in iphoto or put my music on the hd and have it open in itunes so i dont have all of it on the computer. i take hundreds of photos a week and my photo gallery is not shrinking by any means any time soon so the more i can put in places other than my hard drive the better but i need them accessible at all times through my iphoto and other programs like photoshop illustrator etc.
    DR.

  • Removing Time Machine backups for (missing) external hard drive

    My Time Machine was backing up everything, including external hard drives.
    One of the external drives (ORIGDRIVE) started hardware failures.  I added a new external drive (NEWDRIVE) and used Finder to copy files over (some via RAID and some from the Time Machine copy a month before the problems cropped up).
    Then I ejected and unplugged ORIGDRIVE and shipped it back to the manufacturer.
    The problem is that the Time Machine still has all those copies from ORIGDRIVE eating up disk space, but I want to keep a year's worth of monthlies for all the other drives (just in case another drive fails soon).
    Since ORIGDRIVE is not mounted, Time Machine doesn't show me those files so I can use the "Delete All Backups of" option within the GUI.
    If I try renaming NEWDRIVE to ORIGDRIVE, what I get instead is ORIGDRIVE 1 .
    We're talking dozens of TB here, so reformatting the Time Machine volume and starting over maxes out the system and leaves me flying without a complete backup for most of a week, something I'd rather avoid.
    Suggestions?

    My Time Machine was backing up everything, including external hard drives.
    One of the external drives (ORIGDRIVE) started hardware failures.  I added a new external drive (NEWDRIVE) and used Finder to copy files over (some via RAID and some from the Time Machine copy a month before the problems cropped up).
    Then I ejected and unplugged ORIGDRIVE and shipped it back to the manufacturer.
    The problem is that the Time Machine still has all those copies from ORIGDRIVE eating up disk space, but I want to keep a year's worth of monthlies for all the other drives (just in case another drive fails soon).
    Since ORIGDRIVE is not mounted, Time Machine doesn't show me those files so I can use the "Delete All Backups of" option within the GUI.
    If I try renaming NEWDRIVE to ORIGDRIVE, what I get instead is ORIGDRIVE 1 .
    We're talking dozens of TB here, so reformatting the Time Machine volume and starting over maxes out the system and leaves me flying without a complete backup for most of a week, something I'd rather avoid.
    Suggestions?

  • Backup External Hard Drive with Time Machine

    I have several external hard drives and am wondering if I can use Time Machine to backup External Hard Drive #1 on Hard Drive #2? Or is it only possible to backup your Main Machine on an External Hard Drive?
    Thanks

    These issues with non-apple format drives that you mention, would they concern the dedicated Time Machine external hard drive, the external hard drive one is looking to backup, or both?
    What are the issues raised? My current 500GB external hard drive is FAT-32 and I want to use an additional 500GB external hard drive [fresh out the box so I can determine whatever format it is fairly easily] as the dedicated Time Machine backup. Would you suggest reformatting my 500GB FAT-32 drive before initiating the new drive as the dedicated Time Machine backup? It's possible to do so, but would take quite some time. Also, this may move into a different subject, but I enjoy being able to share files with a PC with Windows XP using my external hard drive; would any of the formats you mentioned as being Time Machine-safe allow me to continue to do so?

  • Backup an external hard drive connected to Airport -- is this possible?

    Currently I have a hub connected to my airport extreme. There are 2 external hard drives connected to the hub. One has my iTunes library on it, and the other is being used for time machine backups.
    I have no problem doing the backup wirelessly to the one hard drive. In time machine, I could pick either external drive to back up to. What I am trying to do is back up the external drive too. Time machine is only seeing the hard drive on my laptop. The exclude list is blank and when I try to add the itunes HD to the exclude list (to remove it), it won't let me select it-- it is greyed out.
    If I connect the itunes HD directly into my laptop, I can run the backup, but that is not very convenient. Is what I am trying to do possible? Does anyone have any ideas? Are there any other posts discussing this (I could not find any with my specific problem).
    Thanks!

    nealmay wrote:
    Currently I have a hub connected to my airport extreme. There are 2 external hard drives connected to the hub. One has my iTunes library on it, and the other is being used for time machine backups.
    I have no problem doing the backup wirelessly to the one hard drive. In time machine, I could pick either external drive to back up to. What I am trying to do is back up the external drive too. Time machine is only seeing the hard drive on my laptop. The exclude list is blank and when I try to add the itunes HD to the exclude list (to remove it), it won't let me select it-- it is greyed out.
    That's correct. Time Machine will not back up a network drive (see #2 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip* at the top of this forum).
    You're going to need a different app. Which one will depend on where you want the backups to go; some apps will not back-up from a network drive; others won't back up to a network drive. I don't know, offhand, of any that will do both. Perhaps Kappy, V.K., or others will.
    For backups to a local disk, try either CarbonCopyCloner (which I use to make a full bootable "clone" in addition to Time Machine), and I think SuperDuper will do this as well. CCC is donationware, so you can try it for a while, then send them some $$ so they can keep it current. It can be scheduled to run automatically, and you have the choice of it keeping only current copies or to archive prior versions as well. SuperDuper has a free version, but you need the paid one (about $30) to do scheduling. I don't know if it will keep archive copies.
    There are many other backup apps, some of which will handle network drives. Check Google, VersionTracker.com, or MacUpdate.com.

  • HT201250 I have two macbooks. Can I backup both machines using timemachine on one external hard drive?

    I have two MacBooks, both operating on different OS - Leopard and Snow Leopard. Can they both be backed upusing time machine onto one external hard drive?

    J D McIninch wrote:
    Actually, it does both. However, if you use two machines with the same name, it can pose a problem. If you mount the Time Machine drive and open the backup db directory, you'll note that the subdirectories are arranged by system name. The information about the ethernet MAC ID is in hidden files.
    Yes, as posted, to the user it's confusing  (and accessing your backups via the Finder is not recommended).
    Time Machine knows which is which, and will back up each Mac to the proper folder.  When/if you want to use the "Star Wars" display to view or restore from either Mac's backups, it will show the backups for the Mac you're on.

Maybe you are looking for