Is it possible to convert a NTFS external drive to HFS extended?

My daughter saw the light and changed from a Sony laptop to an Intel iMac.
The problem is that she has 2 USB2 external drives that were formatted as NTFS. I spent some frustrating time today with the one of the drives and Disk Utility. Disk Utility kept choking (becoming unresponsive with the spinning pizza wheel) on formatting the HD or changing the partition from MBR to GUID.
I wondered what I might be doing wrong, but the quote below from the LaCie support site suggests that the problem is more systematic.
+Once you have converted a volume from FAT 32 to NTFS, there is no going back. You can convert from FAT 32 to NTFS, but not the other way around.+
If so, that would be disappointing. It certainly is true that Windows doesn't even off the option of creating FAT 32 partitions after re-initializing the HD.
I hope that I'm missing something here and that someone will gently point out the way forward. Thanks,
w r glendon

For an Intel Mac connect the USB drive to the computer. Do the following:
Extended Hard 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. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (only required for Intel Macs) then click on the OK button. Set the number of partitions from the dropdown menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the volume(s) mount on the Desktop.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data (single pass) and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process may take up to several hours or more depending upon the drive size.
Steps 4-6 are optional but should be used on a drive that has never been formatted before, if the format type is not Mac OS Extended, if the partition scheme has been changed, or if a different operating system (not OS X) has been installed on the drive.
Repeat the above for the second drive. Do not skip any steps as the Zero Data step is important for what you are doing.

Similar Messages

Time Machine under Lion appears to ignore Paragon NTFS external drives

Have Macbook pro with 2 external drives, one HFS+ formatted as my Time Machine drive, and another NTFS drive with the bulk of my user data (photos and audio files).
To improve NTFS read performance and enable writing, I have been using Paragon NTFS for about 2 months very successfully.
Time machine was also working to backup the NTFS drive under Snow Leopard, with no issues.
However, just moved to Lion, and one of the items I noticed is that the NTFS drive (with all my "valuable" data) is now being ignored by Time Machine. If I enter the time machine Preferences...Options... the NTFS volume is listed in the items excluded from backup. I can remove it from the list, and click save, yet if I return back to Options the drive has re-appeared in the excluded items list.
Is this a bug or intentional? This is a huge drawback, as I really didn't want to migrate everything off this huge drive just to re-format it because of this.

Had similar problem. Upgraded to Lion, couldnt read any NTFS drives! Turns out old NTFS drivers from Paragon dont work in Lion, so had to buy new one. That also didnt work. Eventually followed discussion thread on Paragon support, deleted (manually) the offending drivers (UFS/NTFS) from Library, uninstalled Paragon.
Could now see NTFS drives R/O.
Reinstalled Paragon driver, now cant see drives in Finder but can in Disk Utility. Did a 'repair' on drives in Disk Utility and hey presto! it's all back where it should be.
Now my time machine has stopped working, don't know if they're related.

Partition NTFS External Drive to work with Time Machine

Hello Apple Support Community,
I use a 1TB External NTFS hard drive to backup the contents of my Desktop Windows computer. I was wondering if I could use Disk Utility (or another tool) to partition the external hard drive so I could use TIme Machine on it. That way, not only would I have my desktop backed up, but also my laptop.
I'd delegate around 700GB for my Windows Desktop and 300GB for my MacBook Pro.
Is this possible? Or do I need to erase the entire external harddrive and backup everything all over again?
Thanks,
David

Requirements to use Time Machine
Time Machine is only available with Leopard or later.
External FireWire or USB 2.0 drive
Time Capsule
Drive shared by a Mac running 10.5 or later using File Sharing
Drive shared by a Mac running 10.5 Server
SAN volume managed by Apple's Xsan file system
A TM drive must be partitioned with either APM (PPC) or GUID (Intel) and formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled.)
Clearly you cannot use Time Machine with an NTFS formatted backup drive. Furthermore, Disk Utility cannot partition an NTFS formatted drive. In my opinion you should use separate drives for separate backups.

Yosemite - Spotlight NTFS external drive indexing issue

Good morning!
Yosemite's spotlight doesn't seem to find any of the files on my external NTFS hard drive. I would like to know whether there is a way or not to get it done.
PS: I've added it to the privacy tab, removed it and it still not indexing. Also used the "sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist" code in terminal.

By default, OS X ships with NTFS read capability. OS X would need a third-party (Tuxera, Paragon) NTFS driver package that enables NTFS write functionality in order for Spotlight to index the NTFS drive.

AirPort Extreme and USB NTFS External Drive and Canon MP810 printer

The AirPort Extreme works great as a wireless router. And with the additional AirPort Express, I now have a WDS in my house. I can also stream my iTunes downstairs. This is all great, it's working.
What's not working is:
1. Adding a USB NTFS-formatted external Maxtor drive to the USB port Extreme.
2. Able to copy, scan, and use "all" printing functionality of the Canon MP810 USB printer when connected to the USB port of the Extreme. Please I note I can choose File, Print from most applications and it works, but I can't use Canon's My Printer tool to access the printer wirelessly.
I guess I'd like an unofficial confirmation that this is correct. I am a little disappointed that Apple didn't communicate this correctly in any of their specifications.
I will begin looking into the comparable Linksys wireless router, but I have the strange feeling that I will get the same results.
I don't know how Dell is able to do it with it's AIO 966 printer.
Thanks,
Frank

1. Adding a USB NTFS-formatted external Maxtor drive to the USB port Extreme.
Problem arises as OS X can not write to NTFS formatted drives and therefore you need to use HFS+ or FAT32.
2. Able to copy, scan, and use "all" printing functionality of the Canon MP810 USB printer when connected to the USB port of the Extreme. Please I note I can choose File, Print from most applications and it works, but I can't use Canon's My Printer tool to access the printer wirelessly.
Can I scan using my all-in-one when it is connected to the USB port of an Airport Express or Airport Extreme Base Station?
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=610763&#610763
I guess I'd like an unofficial confirmation that this is correct. I am a little disappointed that Apple didn't communicate this correctly in any of their specifications.
As you can see from this page
http://www.apple.com/airportextreme/specs.html
It does state quite clearly
+For shared printing with a USB printer +
If it allowed scanning, I am sure it would have said
+For shared printing and scanning with a USB all-in-one+
or similar.
If it doesn't explicitly say it will do something I would assume it can't.

Windows NTFS External Drive and Permissions

Hello,
I have a 250 gig Maxtor OneTouch I use for storing/backing up files from my PC (Windows XP Home Edition) In the past I have been able to use my external drives on both my Mac and PC without any problems. This time, however when I connect the drive, it mounts, but I only have "Read Only" access. I'm currenty using 10.3.9 and I am the administrator. Is this something I'm going to have to change in the PC or can I do it from the Mac? Thanks in advance!
Heres the info from Disk Utility:
Name : OneTouch4
Type : Volume
Disk Identifier : disk3s1
Mount Point : /Volumes/OneTouch4
File System : Winows NT Filesystem
Connection Bus : USB
IO Content : Windows_NTFS
Writable : No
Capacity : 232.9 GB (250,056,705,024 Bytes)
Free Space : 216.3 GB (232,248,385,536 Bytes)
Used : 16.6 GB (17,808,318,464 Bytes)
Number of Files : 3,680
Number of Folders : 0
Permissions Enabled : Yes
Can Turn Permissions Off : No
Can Repair Permissions : No
Can Be Verified : No
Can Be Repaired : No
Can Be Formatted : No
Bootable : No
Supports Journaling : No
Journaled : No
Disk Number : 3
Partition Number : 1

Well, no I hadn't written to this drive from the Mac in the past. It was a new drive and I used it on the PC first. Would it be possible to maybe create a new partition, either on the Mac or the PC in a Mac readable format without destroying the information currently on it?

Is it possible to backup between 2 external drives?

I've searched answers in the community and can't find one that specifcally addresses my needs.
Let me first provide some context for my question.
I am a writer and author, and plan to move from an early 2009 iMac to a MacBook Pro Retina. I plan to use it as a desktop with an external monitor and keyboard and have the benefit of occassional using it as a portable on it's own. The storage space is more limited than on my iMac. Therefore, I'm planning to have a lot of my files such as photos etc on the external drive and probably have some of my documents stored on it as well.
Given that my writing is my living, I am paranoid about losing data. I currently back up to an external drive that I use for Time Machine, and also using other means back up to two additional external drives. In addition my writing backsup to cloud storage.
This may seem a bit paranoid but I did have the experience a few years back where the drive failed on my Mac AND the external drive failed. So now I take care because a loss could mean losing years of reasearch and work.
So, my question is, with now files being stored off on an external drive, is there software that will automatically synch, back up or replicate one external drive to another? This would be in addition and supplemental to backing on on a drive reserved for Time Machine.
Thanks!

Hi Gemma,
This happens because your original IE window is being used to display the second web site, thereby removing the first.
To have two open web sites you need two IE windows so that you can switch between them. In effect you open the second web site in a new IE window. If you click on 'file' then 'new -> window' this will open a second IE window where you can browse independently of the first window. You can have multiple windows open in this way.
regards,

Paragon NTFS and copying to NTFS external drive-won't copy just makes alias

Hi,
So I got Paragon and it allows me to go into my boot camp and external hard drive and edit, copy, write to those drives.
When I first set it up, I moved some folders and files over to my external drive. When I went back to those files later on, the folders were there, but all my video files were just an alias.
If I have paragon turned on, I can open the files and it shows them as actual files (not an alias file type) and it plays perfectly. But if I have paragon turned off, it returns to just an alias and does not open.
So, to test what was going on, I deleted the alias and recopied the file onto the external and deleted the original off the mac (and emptied trash). Still the same problem and result (there if paragon is turned on). I tried the same process but doing a move and still didn't work.
But the other folders were able to be copied and accessed.
So is there a limitation to file size (smallest file is only 125mb)? Or is it just video files? Or am I doing something wrong? I have yet to try the same process above with a non-video file.

I suggest you ask this on the Paragon support forums. this is clearly a problem with Paragon not OS X itself.

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!

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!

External Drive Format - Mac Extended vs Fat32

Hi
There seems to be a general consensus that if you are saving iMovie projects to an external hard disk, the format must be Mac Extended (Journaled).
There is an Apple support article from July 2003 saying that this is the case.
However I have experimented, testing an imovie 6 project saved on both a Mac Extended partition and a Fat32 partition on my external drive.
Both appear to run perfectly.
Does anyone know whether the article / idea that iMovie needs Mac Extended format is out of date? Has subsequent releases of iMovie fixed the issue with using Fat32?
Any experiences/thoughts anyone? I'd ideally prefer to keep my external as all Fat32 seeing as I want to swap files with my PC.....

Why not partition the drive, one partition Mac OS Extended, one partition Fat32, as suggested in another thread?
BTW, I wouldn't rely on your experience storing an iMovie project on a Fat32 drive to prove much of anything. If Apple says not to use it, I wouldn't use it. There's no way any one of us can test all the conditions that can and will arrise.
One such condition, if memory serves, is that large clips — longer than 20 minutes — do not import correctly with Fat32. Something about a 4GB limit, if I recall. Users have reported other problems too. A search for "Fat32" in the iMovie forums should reveal several.
Karl

Oracle VM Server 2.2.1 - support for NTFS external drive?

Hi,
Another "newbie" question here... we have just installed Oracle VM Server 2.2.1 on a Dell box and now we want to install some Template VM's that we downloaded. The problem is - they are on an external Hard Drive that is an NTFS drive.
So - when we connect the drive it's detected ok - but we can't mount it as the NTFS filesystem support doesn't appear to be installed as standard?
If it isn't - how/where do we get NTFS support into the Kernel?
Any help appreciated.
Regards,
Bren

Hi Bren,
unfortunately as far as I know native NTFS support is in RHEL/OEL 5.4. And since Oracle VM is based on OEL 5.3 there is no direct support for NTFS.
However there is an "unofficial" and probably not supported possibility to install FUSE and get NTFS3g to get what you want:
Point the yum update server to OVS 2.2.1 and OEL 5.3 (on which OVS is based) on public-yum.oracle.com:
# vi /etc/yum.repos.d/public-yum-el5.repo
[el5_u3_base]
name=Enterprise Linux $releasever U3 - $basearch - base
baseurl=http://public-yum.oracle.com/repo/EnterpriseLinux/EL5/3/base/$basearch/
gpgkey=http://public-yum.oracle.com/RPM-GPG-KEY-oracle-el5
gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
[ovm22_2.2.1_base]
name=OracleVM 2 - 2.2.1 - $basearch - base
baseurl=http://public-yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleVM/OVM2/2.2.1/base/$basearch/
gpgkey=http://public-yum.oracle.com/RPM-GPG-KEY-oracle-el5
gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
Then you are able to install gcc compiler, which is needed for FUSE:
# yum install gcc
Insert the OVS Server CD or use the OVS repository from public-yum to install the develop kernel:
# yum install kernel-ovs-devel
Download the required FUSE packages and NTFS3g:
http://ntfs-3g.org
http://fuse.sourceforge.net/
# wget http://marush.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/ntfs-3g-200944-el5i686.rpm
# wget http://switch.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/fuse/fuse-2.7.4.tar.gz
Install Fuse:
# tar -xvzf fuse-2.7.4.tar.gz
# cd fuse-2.7.4
# ./configure
# make
# make install
# modprobe fuse
# cd ..
Install NTFS3g:
# rpm -Uvh ntfs-3g-200944-el5i686.rpm
Then you should be able to mount the ntfs filesystem:
# mkdir /ntfs
# echo "/dev/sda3 /ntfs ntfs-3g defaults 0 0" >> /etc/fstab
# mount -a
Note however, that this probably is not supported.
So mounting the drive on a windows computer and copying the files via. pscp might probably be the easier and supported way...
Regards
Sebastian

Mac writes files as compressed to ntfs external drive

I bought an external hard drive and formatted it to ntfs. Whenever I copy files from the Mac to the external ntfs drive it automatically converts it to a compressed ntfs file. This is very frustrating because my media player only plays uncompressed files, so I can't play my files on it. Is there anyway to *prevent* my mac from automatically compressing the files when they are copied to a ntfs drive?

NTFS files can have a "compressed" attribute to them. It saves space at the expense of processing power. If I were in windows, I can check a box that makes the file compressed or not. I don't think I was using a utility to do this, I read here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ntfs#Mac_OS_X) that "Native NTFS write support has been discovered in Mac OS X 10.6 and later, but is not activated by default, although hacks do exist to enable the functionality". If I've been able to copy to the drive doesn't that mean I'm writing to it? In any case, the files I copied to my NTFS drive were all compressed. I read somewhere else that if you copy a file from OS X to a compressed folder on NTFS, then it will automatically compress the file as it is copied into that folder.

Convert a PC external drive to Mac Book format

I purchased an external hard drive and it needs to be reformatted for my MacBook Pro - how do I do this? I just got my MacBook and I'm converting from a PC.

Open the Disk Utility in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder, select it in the sidebar, choose the Erase tab, and specify Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as the format.
(83147)

Using Disk Utility to format external drive as Apple extended?

Hello - I just bought a 750G Lacie USB hard drive, am attempting to reformat it from FAT32 to Mac Extended. However, when I attempt to 'erase' the drive and replace it with Mac Extended, I get the following error message:
+2009-04-28 22:12:24 +0100: Preparing to erase : “ReadyNAS”+
+2009-04-28 22:12:24 +0100: Partition Scheme: Master Boot Record+
+2009-04-28 22:12:24 +0100: 1 volume will be created+
+2009-04-28 22:12:24 +0100: Name : “ReadyNAS”+
+2009-04-28 22:12:24 +0100: Size : 698.6 GB+
+2009-04-28 22:12:24 +0100: Filesystem : Mac OS Extended (Journaled)+
+2009-04-28 22:12:24 +0100: Creating partition map.+
+2009-04-28 22:12:26 +0100: Formatting disk1s1 as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with name ReadyNAS.+
+2009-04-28 22:12:27 +0100: Disk Erase failed with the error:+
+File system formatter failed.+
+2009-04-28 22:12:28 +0100: Erase complete.+
+2009-04-28 22:12:28 0100:
+2009-04-28 22:12:28 +0100: Disk Utility failed during an unspecified action with the error:+
I can reformat it as FAT32, no problem.
Any clues? Thanks!

Use the "partition" tab in Disk Utility, set it to "1 Partition" click the "Options" button, and choose "GUID".

Is it possible to convert a NTFS external drive to HFS extended?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for