Windows-formatted USB hard drive

I have a Windows-formatted 80 Gb HD from my old laptop which I turned into a USB HD. It works when I connect it to my PC, but when I plug it in to my Macbook, I only see the power light on the HD come on. No drive appear on my desktop. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong that's fairly basic, but how can I make this work?
Thanks!

The bus power may be a problem. MacBook has 500 ma out at the usb port. You may need to have an external supply to run it.
It is probably formatted NTFS. Macs can read but not write to NTFS. It needs to be either formatted for Windows FAT32 or for a Mac
Mort

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Can i use windows migration assistant to transfer files from my windows formatted external hard drive to my mac?

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No.
Just connect the drive to your Mac. The Mac can read most Windows formats (it cannot WRITE Windows New Technology File System (NTFS) formatted drives.

How do I transfer data/videos from a Mac-OS formatted portable hard drive to a Windows-formatted portable hard drive?

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Hi FornPLAY,
Your Mac will not be able to write to an NTSF formatted drive, as Mac OS X only supports reading from NTSF natively. You have a few options to be able to use that Windows formatted drive. You could try reformatting the drive using Disk Utilty to a format like MS-DOS (FAT). That would allow for both Mac and Windows cross-compatibility.
~~
Austin

Partitioning and Formatting USB Hard Drive

I'm using a FreeAgent USB hard drive on my system, but placed a lot of files on it before realizing that Mac can't write to an NTFS file system. I've got about 35 GB of files on a 250GB drive. So, two questions:
1. Is there something I can use to partition the drive and format part of it to FAT32 and part of it to the Mac format (realizing that I won't be able to read the Mac formatted partition in Windows).
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I suppose I could just format it FAT, but I have some vague notion that the Mac format will work better with the Mac OS, especially for backing up. I'd primarily use the Mac partition for backup, and for storage of video files that just take up too much space on the MacBook internal HD. Don't know how realistic that is, and I'm also not sure which backup program would be best suited. I'm pretty new to the Mac environment, and am not even all that sure whether to keep the *.dmg files that I've used to install several programs that I purchased for the Mac.

Access exFAT formatted USB hard drive partition through Time Capsule 2013

I am trying to move data, mostly music, from my old PC to a wirelessly accessible HDD that we can get to from our MacBooks running OS 10.6.8. I have a 2013 Time Capsule with a USB hard drive attached, but I can't see the exFAT partition containing all of the data (on my Mac). I can see the other two partitions, which are formatted for a Mac. I can also see the exFAT partition on my Mac when it is plugged in directly, I just can't access that partition through the Time Capsule. Any ideas on how to remedy this? Or if there is a better solution for moving this data. We don't care about accessing the data from the PC any longer. We are going to get rid of it. We just need a place to keep all of the data where we can get to it.
Message was edited by: A2Laurel

You need to connect the drive directly to a Mac, copy the data to another location, reformat that partition as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), and put the data back onto it.
(85877)

Accessing a USB hard drive connected to a AEBS from Windows XP SP2

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Hi John,
My hard drive is already formatted to fat 32. If I "check disks" in AirPort Utillity in windows it see's the disk and knows how much free and used space there is on it. It also knows when I'm accessing the disk from my iMac but when I try to connect to the hard drive from windows I just get the error message in my first post. When I click on AirPort Disk in windows my base station name doesn't appear, it does on my mac. I tried you suggestion but it hasn't helped. Thanks anyway. If you've got any other suggestion i'll gladly give them a try.
Thanks again.

Can't format external USB hard drive

Hi Guys
I recently bought a Mac Pro, having decided to make the switch from PC, but am having trouble formatting an external 0.5 TB USB hard drive I used with the PC for use with the Mac. The drive was supplied formatted to Windows NTFS and when I first connected it to the Mac the blue LED indicator blinked off - presumably beacause OSX couldn't read the drive? Now, whenever I try to format the drive using disk utility I am presented with a message stating, "The underlying task reported failure on exit". If I try to partition the drive, I get a message stating, "Resource busy".
I am new to Macs and OSX, so imagine a lot of this problem is down to inexperience. I really need the external drive as I'm a musician, and store all my samples and projects on the drive.
Cheers, Dan

AFAIK, NTFS isn't a supported format for an ICBM (Intel-chip-based Mac). You need to remove any data files and reformat it MS-DOS or some such thing. Check Disk Utility's help files and http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303220
Since you're a newcomer to the Mac, you should peruse these before you do anything:
Switching from Windows to Mac OS X,
Basic Tutorials on using a Mac, and
MacTips Learning Centre.
Additionally, *Texas Mac Man* recommends:
Quick Assist.
Welcome to the Switch To A Mac Guides, and
A guide for switching to a Mac.

Airport Extreme usb hard drive connection loss after closing finder window

I just did a software update on my MacBook Pro and now I am experiencing a weird Airport Extreme usb hard drive issue. I can see the name of my airport extreme in the Shared section of my finder window. However when I click on it, the finder indicates the it's connecting, but it stops immediately and displays the 'Not Connected' message. When I click on the 'Connect As' button, I am prompted to enter my password and if I click 'Connect', it just spins out endlessly. However, when I re-enter the password and press Connect, my usb drive mounts. I can view, access and use the drive's contents, but if I close the finder window, the connection drops and I have to re-connect. What else is weird, is that once I see my drives, the finder indicates that I am connected as another user(not a user native to this computer). This issue did not exist before my software update.
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Canon Printer Software Update 2.3 and Security Update 2010-003.
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I will really appreciate any feedback.

Free Solution:
Sure there's a »fix« with Apple software. You'll need to install the Developer Tools (Xcode) from the Snow Leopard Install DVD, though.
After you've done that, you can use "SetFile" to clear the Alias bit from the misbehaving Volume:
/usr/bin/SetFile -a a /Volumes/<YourExternalDriveName>
Please keep in mind that using this command might be dangerous, so don't try this solution unless you feel confident on the command line. (See http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/m an1/SetFile.1.html or invoke /usr/bin/SetFile without arguments for more info on the SetFile command.)
...a similar discussion and answer can be found at: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2131824&start=45&tstart=0

Can I bring files from a NTFS formatted external hard drive (from Windows XP 32 bit desktop) to my new macbook pro retina?

Can I bring files from a NTFS formatted external hard drive (from Windows XP 32 bit desktop) to my new macbook pro retina?

What are these files you are trying to copy over?
If they are program specific and there is no program on a Mac to read them then you'll have to find either a Mac version of that program or one that does the same thing and can read those files.
The file extension should not change just because you connect a NTFS formatted drive to a Mac computer. A Word Document is still a .doc/.docx ad the same for all other office type programs. Music files with an extension of .MP3, or whatever, should read the same on both system. Same goes for all other files like images with a .JPG extension.
Yes I would network them.
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marimbapony1 wrote:
Also, when I view the files from the external hard drive, they show up as .nbz and are not recognized by any program on the Mac. Should I just abandon the hard drive option and start sharing files through the LAN approach?

AirPort Extreme and shared USB Hard Drive

I received an AirPort Extreme for Christmas with the intent of using it to share a network Hard Drive and Printer between the multiple machines on our home network. I've finally gotten it set up with Bonjour on the PC's, and the AirPort Utility on all machines. It's connected via ethernet cable to a Dell PC, and wirelessly to an iMac, a Dell Laptop, my iPhone and a PS3. Internet functionality is great for all devices.
My next step was to connect a Seagate 750GB External USB Hard Drive to the APE. This drive was previously connected to the Dell PC, and was formatted as NTFS. I went through the hassle of converting it to FAT32, I connected it to the router, and both Dell's and the iMac can see the drive. I haven't checked if the PS3 can see it yet, but since I haven't found Bonjour for the PS3, I'm not holding my breath. The iPhone - well, mine isn't jailbroken at the moment.
A few quick hints I learned from doing a lot of web surfing and trial-and-error. These could save people a LOT of time...
+ Don't format a external drive as either an Apple Drive (HFS+) or as a Windows Drive (NTFS) if you plan on using data off it on both a Mac and a PC. Windows won't read HFS+ without a converter, APE won't accept NTFS. It needs to be FAT32 as this is nearly universal.
+ Windows will only format a maximum of 32GB as FAT32. It's a stupid limit, and you have to jump hoops to get it to do a larger drive size.
+ Use the Disk Utility on the Mac to erase the drive and reformat it as an MS-DOS partition. It will work up to a drive of about 2TB according to what I've read. On the Mac, MS-DOS partition = FAT32, and it formatted my 750GB drive as a single 750GB partition.
Now, I've begun the task of copying all our media to the drive. Copied a few pictures, no problem. Copied a few MP3's, no problem. Where the problems start is in trying to copy movies to the drive. We have ripped most of our DVD's to DivX / H.264, to keep the kids from destroying the DVD's (trust me, DVD's scratch EASY in the hands of a 5-year old). So I have about 50 movies to transfer, each around 1GB in size.
Each time I try to transfer a movie to the drive, I get an error "*Error Copying File or Folder*" which displays the message "*Cannot copy BlahBlahBlah: The specified network name is no longer available.*" This also results in the HDD becoming unavailable to the other machines on the network. I've had to un-plug and then re-plug the APE a few times to get the HDD to work again. Sometimes, the copy actually does work, even though I get this message. I know the easy work-around is to connect the HDD directly to the PC with the files on it and transfer them that way, but I shouldn't have to do that - it should just work.
I'm wondering if anyone else has any kind of a similar experience? It appears that I can stream music and video from the drive easily enough, it's the writing to the drive that seems to be the issue. Thanks in advance...
Best Regards,
Jeff

I would think you would have better luck formatting it as HFS+ (Macintosh Extended File System). You'll still be able to see it from your non-Mac PCs.
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=6370006#6370006

USB hard drive not detected on reboot

I am running Windows 7 Ulitmate 64-bit on my 2011 15" Macbook Pro. I have a USB Hard Drive (WD My Passport SE - USB 3.0/2.0 - 1 TB).
The hard drive is formatted for HFS+ and I am running Mac Drive 8 to detect it in Windows.
For some reason when I reboot (in Windows), the hard drive won't be there until I unplug it and plug it back in.
This is really annoying! Can anybody help me? I'm pretty good with things like this but I can't think of any reason this shouldn't be working right.
HELP =T
Message was edited by: PTHEOFYL
Message was edited by: PTHEOFYL

I am having the exact same problem. WD 1TB Passport. USB 3.0 drive. Running on Windows 7 Pro 64 via Bootcamp.
My 1TB Passport is formatted with FAT32 and works with Windows and Mac OS.
I was getting the same problem when I was running Windows XP Pro on the same MacBook Pro. I was hoping the upgrade to Windows 7 would remidy the issue but it did not.
The drive light is on in a steady state when I boot and I have the same symptoms as reported by everyone else above.
In my research, I am leaning towards thinking that it is a power issue related to the cable used to connect the USB 3.0 Drive or something to do with the USB driver for Bootcamp, but researching the WD site suggests it's a power issue, not a faulty or failing drive.
I have a 500GB WD Passport USB 2.0 also attached to my computer, also running FAT32 and it starts up no problem. It's just the USB 3.0 drive that is having this issue.
Also worth noting; the drive is detected properly when I boot in Mac OS X. It's only the Windows side I have to unplug and plug back in to access the drive.

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

Backup a dual boot iMac with OSX + Vista to Time capsule and USB hard drive

I have just bought a Time Capsule which is now working as my WiFi Network base station and backs up an iMac and a Macbook. The iMac has both OSX and Vista (using Boot Camp) and I was using a USB Hard Drive that has 2 partitions (HFS+ for the Mac; NTFS for Vista) to back up the iMac. Rather than leave this attached to the iMac just to back up the Vista partition I would like to move it to the Time Capsule's USB port and use it as NAS. The idea being that it becomes a NAS with one partition used to back up the Windows data when I run the iMac with Vista and the other partition to archive the Time Machine backups from both the iMac and Macbook. I tried to connect it as it was but got an error and reading the forum it seems that it won't work unless both partitions are HFS+ or FAT. If I reformat the NTFS partition to HFS+ will I be able to use the built in backup function of Vista to back up the Vista partition to the USB hard drive? I read somewhere else that Time Capsule takes care of the formatting for an external NAS drive and Windows will be able to read and write to it even though it's not NTFS. Any ideas comments appreciated.

This is crude but if you need a work around, just plug the USB drive directly into the iMac.. copy the files to it.. then plug it into the TC.
You also do not need to use the TC as an intermediary between your iMac and MBP.. just turn on sharing in the computer.. so you can directly copy files from one to the other.. Macs have public access directory preconfigured for each user account.
As far as mounting the TC..
In finder use Go, Connect to server.. and type.
AFP://TCname or TCipaddress
Where TCname is the actual name of the TC.. I strongly recommend you follow SMB network rules.. ie if your TC has a name like
Fred Blog's Time Capsule 2445566.
It is too long.. it has spaces and it has non-alphanumeric characters.
Shorten it to FredTC
No spaces no characters that are NOT alphanumeric.
TCIPaddress is simply the standard IP.
You can also use CIFS://TCname which according to the article forces the connection back to SMB1 rather than SMB2 which as usual is broken.
But I would definitely use AFP if possible. I cannot understand the decision to move to SMB as standard.

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.
(21126)

Will formatting my hard drive remove my bootcamp partition? Also, downgrading...?

Hi!
I have 2 partitions, one for Mavericks and one for Windows 8. I would like to do a clean install of Mavericks. I have already redownloaded Mavericks and I'm about to put it on a USB so I can boot from it and reinstall the operating system. I read somewhere that to format your hard drive and do a clean install, you have to boot into the USB and then you'll have an option to format your hard drive from there. I'm not sure if that's correct so that's another thing I would like to inquire about.
Another thing I would like to know about, although not relevant to my previous questions, is this: Is it possible to get a free download of Mountain Lion (legally, of course)? I would much rather do a clean install of Mountain Lion than Mavericks, but I've searched google and there seems to be no way to get it for free. However, I did read that it's possible to get it free within 30 days of purchasing your Mac but that 30 days have long passed for me.
So my 3 questions are the following:
1) Will formatting my hard drive remove my already existing bootcamp partition? (If it does, I don't mind but I would still like to know)
2) How exactly do I format my hard drive?
3) Is it possible to get Mountain Lion for free so I can downgrade?
Thanks to anyone who helps!

Formatting a HDD will delete all user data on the drive. Yes you can do it on an older MBP by connecting to it via USB, but do you really want to? If the repair shop says the HDD is functional, there is no need to wipe it and reinstall the OSX. The problem then is something else.
It would be helpful if you indicated the EXACT model/year MBP that you have.
Ciao.

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