Need help formatting external hard drive for OS 10.5.8.

My older 2007 iMac is running on OS 10.5.8. I purchaed Snow Lepoard but was told to back up years of music and pictures. I bought an external hard drive that is compatible with Mac OS 10.6. How do I format the external hard drive to accept OS 10.5.8.? Showing error code -43....? HELP PLEASE!

How is the current EHD formatted?

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I need a new external hard drive for my iMac8,1

I need a new external hard drive for my :
Model Name:    iMac
Model Identifier:    iMac8,1
Processor Name:    Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed:    3.06 GHz
Number Of Processors:    1
Total Number Of Cores:    2
L2 Cache:    6 MB
Memory:    4 GB
Bus Speed:    1.07 GHz
Boot ROM Version:    IM81.00C1.B00
SMC Version (system):    1.30f1
Serial Number (system):    YD8520CD0N4
Hardware UUID:    073B29AD-6FFB-5E64-A52C-BF19A054F363
I do not have Thunderbolt on this and when I look up the specs for USB I get
USB Bus:
Host Controller Location:    Built-in USB
Host Controller Driver:    AppleUSBUHCI
PCI Device ID:    0x2835
PCI Revision ID:    0x0004
PCI Vendor ID:    0x8086
Bus Number:    0x3a
Don't know if this is USB 3.0 or USB 2.0
All the new drives seem to use either Thunderbolt or USB 3.0

I have a Western Digital 2 Terabyte USB External Hard Drive and it works like a charm and it costed me $129.00. My opinion is you can't go wrong with this brand and size for home use.
Cheers
Don

Do you need a special external hard drive for iMac?

Do you need a special external hard drive for iMac?

Any external hard drive that will connect via Firewire 800, USB, or Thunderbolt will work.
I have a 750GB Western Digital Scorpio drive in an OWC case, sitting on a Backpack, which connects via Firewire. Western Digital Scorpio drives have 5 year warranties, the OWC (macsales.com) cases usually use the Oxford chipset which works well with macs, and the Backpack is a slick way to mount a backup drive without taking up desk space.
After you hook up whatever external drive you end up with, you'll partition and initialize it for OS X, then begin using it.
My opinion, I would not get a Western Digital pre-packaged external drive/case. While the hard drives are OK, there have been a number of people that have had issues with the electronics.

Need help reformatting my hard drive for mac only

Help please
Need help reformatting my hard drive for mac only with my toshishba hard drive

What Mac is this please, with what version of OS X?

Need to reformat external hard drive for time machine?

Hello,
We recently purchased an external hard drive for our family iMac after we had to have a new hard drive put in. We picked up a Western Digital 1tb My Book (http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=725). I set up the external hd with time machine and all was fine for about a month.
An error message of "The backup volume is read only" started appearing. I attempted to repair the disk through these directions http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3275#1 but when I was trying to follow the steps, I think I disconnected the external hd without dismounting it, so now I'd assume I need to reformat the external hd. I can't seem to find instructions on how to do this. Where should I look for reformatting my external hard drive?
Any other tips or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

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. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (for Intel Macs) or APM (for PPC Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
Message was edited by: Kappy

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.

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/

Need Help with External Hard drives and too much music

I am not terribly tech-savvy, and I need your help. I have a G5 PPC dual processor with an internal 250GB drive. I have two seagate firewire/USB2 external hard drives. One is 250GB and one is 350GB. I want to know how to use them to get my Mac to run faster and better.
My original hard drive is 7GB shy of being full. Almost half of this is my itunes library which is over 100GB. The older (250GB) hard drive has about 150GB of photos/videos.
My Mac is running slow as molasses and when I power up the external hard drives it slows down to what I recall my original Mac Plus ran like.
I use the G5 primarily to work with photos, illustrations and creating the occasional DVD with video and photos. the apps I use most often are Photoshop, Illustrator and Painter. I always listen to music while work.
I hope all of this information is helpful! Here is my question:
What is the best way for me to set up and use these external hard drives to return my G5 to its original blazing (to me) fast speed?
PPC G5 Mac OS X (10.4.9)

I think you should look at adding two 500GB internal drives. I'd say Maxtor MaxLine Pro for cost, but they also run much warmer (43ºC even when nearly doing zilch) so I'd go with WD RE2 500GB for $40 ea. more.
dump whatever you don't need, trash anything that is hogging space and is just temp file or useless cache. Web browsers can leave behind a ton of small files eating up tens of MBs.
Use SuperDuper to backup/clone your drive.
Disk Warrior 4 to repair (after it gets to 15% free, or just forget for now).
A 250GB drive formats to 240GB and you have ~3% free it looks like.
For every data drive plan to have two backup drives.
Keep your boot drive to 40% used.
And your data drive to 60%.
Backups can go a little higher.
Drives are cheap and inexpensive, especially for the space and performance. And they have improved SATA over the years it has been out.
By doing a backup followed by erasing your drive, and then restoring it, using SuperDuper, which optimizes the organization, skips copying temp files that aren't needed, it also defragments your files. I would do backup daily to different sets that you "rotate." And before any OS update. And do the erase and restore probably every 2 months.
Make sure you keep one drive partition somewhere that is just your disk utility emergency boot drive that is not a copy of working system, used for doing repairs like running Disk Warrior and Disk Utility.
You may need to repair; backup; even erase and restore your external drives. Rather than spend on vendor made case, just pick up a good FireWire case either with drive, or bare (and add your own). I think it'd add 500GB FW drive though.
Why?
To begin backup of your current drive. To leave your other FW drives "as is" for now.
Then install a new internal 500GB drive as well so you now have a good current backup, and you have moved your data off 250GB to 500GB. If anything happens, you have one off line FW backup.
Then begin to clean up, organize, and get your FW drives working. It sure sounds like they have had some directory or file problems.
You can find a lot of Firewire and SATA drive choices over at OWC:
http://www.macsales.com/firewire/

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.
What's the best way to go about doing this? Comments/suggestions/tips, please. Is the plan outlined above a stupid idea? Be honest, please!

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.
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Need help with external hard drive!

Hi all,
I have been having trouble with my external hard drive.
My mac is reading the disk however all my files from the hard drive are missing?
In disk utility is seems to show that there are files on the disk but I cannot see them?
At the bottom is shows that there are files on the disk!
PLEASE HELP!!!!
Here is a screenshot of my disk utility

Ok just to clarify the format issue...
Just move the data from the external drive, format and then move it back if you want, as JiveMasterT explained.
If the external drive is FAT file system, then you don't need to format the drive unless you are planning on using the drive as an OSX backup.

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 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.

Format external hard drive for backup drive for Mac Pro

How do you format an external portable hard drive to work as a backup drive for the Mac Pro?

If you plan to use Time Machine then Time Machine will take care of that for you once you choose the drive as your backup destination. If you want to do it yourself then you need to attach the drive; once it is mounted, open Disk Utility and select your drive from the left hand side bar. Once highlighted go to the main window and click on the subheading "Erase". The format needs to be "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". Click Erase and wait for the operation to complete. Now that you have a freshly prepared volume it can be used for Time Machine back up. Time Machine will recognize the disk and ask you if you would like to use this volume at which point you should follow the prompts to begin your back up.

Format external hard drive for use with macbook pro

I have an old external drive that has been used with a pc.
Now I have formatted the disc on the pc, but seemingly, I need to format it for the MacBook Pro, as well.
How to?
Rgds Jan

Go to disk utility
Format it in Mac OSX extended journaled
Warning-- doing so will erase all data on the drive

Formatting external Hard Drive for Mac and PC Access

I have a USB External HD by Seagate that I want to add to my Airport Extreme BS that creates my LAN for a Mac PB, WinXP laptop and HP OfficeJet printer. The disk is currently formatted as NTFS and I don't think a Mac can read that. My HD manufacturer (Seagate) told me 1) FAT32 is unstable for PC and/or Mac usage and 2) my 300GB Pushbutton HD (3 years old) "will not work" on a LAN.
I think both issues are BS as they now have the Maxtor "network HDs" to sell. Any truth to this??
Second question: Seagate forums suggested that I format HD to FAT32 or Mac format and then buy "MacDrive" software so the PC can read/write to the drive. Same question: BS or truth.

I think there is a decent amount of BS in there...
I have a USB HD that came out of the box formatted as FAT32- both my MacBook Pro and PC laptop can read & write to it just fine. I haven't had it long enough to comment on stability, but haven't had any issues yet. I don't have any special software on the PC, either- I think the info from the Seagate forums sounds like people remembering the "old days" of Windows 98 and pre-OS X systems, when you did need software like that for true cross-platform drive access.
As for the drive not working on a LAN- well, the hardware doesn't know the difference, so as long as it's connected via USB to the AEBS, it's fine. What could cause an issue would be your PC OS version. I have found WinXP to be really good (well, for a Win OS, anyway) at playing nice with others. Vista is a train wreck for many, many reasons, but may be OK for this too. Anything earlier than XP may be a bit more troublesome.
Hope my 2 cents helps...

Need help formatting external hard drive for OS 10.5.8.

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