Hardware :: External Drive Format - NTFS/FAT32?
Feb 27, 2009
I'm going to buy my first Macbook this weekend and I'm trying to get myself ready so that I don't have to waste precious playing time on stuff like this I have an external hard drive filled with music, videos and files. I would like to keep using my drive on my mac to access my files and save backups etc. The hard drive is in NTFS format and from what I understand the mac will be able to read but not write to it - which isn't what I want. Ideally I don't want to lose the content on the drive, but if I have to I could slowly copy it all onto dvds. If possible I also want the drive to be compatible with Windows so I can plug it into parents/friends/uni's computers and still be able to view/add content on rare occasions. What format should the drive be and how do I do that? (I think I can manage to do it once someone points me in the right direction)
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Oct 27, 2007
I was using my external hard drive with my mac and its formatted in the MAC HF(something like that) file system. I would like to format that external hard drive such that the file system is either NTFS or FAT32 so that I can use it on my windows partition running on boot camp. I am asking this question since I am planning to get a new HD for my mac and use the old one with windows.
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Feb 15, 2011
I have an external multimedia disk currently formated in NTFS microsoft format. I'd like to be able to copy content to it from my Mac and a PC so I thought to format it in FAT 32. can anyone tell me if there is a size limit to FAT32. what are the major limitations of FAT 32 vs NTFS
Information:
MACBOOK
Mac OS X (10.5.4)
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Jun 9, 2012
How to convert NTFS external hard drive to FAT32 without loosing data?
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.8), Seagate Agent GoFlex 1.5TB
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Dec 16, 2009
I am in need of a data recovery app that can recover data off a Fat32 drive and save the recovered data to a NTFS drive (I use NTFS-3G). I have PhotoRec but can't seem to navigate to my NTFS external to save the data (the only drive big enough to save the data too is my girlfriend's 500GB external and it is NTFS).
Any tips to getting photorec to navigate to the drive (I am pulling from one external to another). Photorec sees the one I want to save too I just can't get it to select it. Also if there are any other programs yall recommend, I will give them a shot.
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Mar 19, 2010
i have a 500GB HDD which has two 250GB partitions, one which is working for time machine, and another one for storage, that one for storage is NTFS, so i can just read but not write files, which is very annoying.
Can i just reformat that partition without loosing my time machine files? I already copied the Storage files to my internal HDD, also which is the best format? I want to be able to read/write stuff both on PC and Mac
Is there a way to copy my Time Machine files to my computer, reformat that partition too to FAT32 and pass them back?
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Nov 2, 2010
i'd like to format my lacie external hard drive with two partitions:
1. HFS+ partition as a bootable clone of my internal drive
2. FAT32 partition readable by any windows (and mac) machine
i'm creating my partitions with disk utility, but i hit a snag when choosing a partition scheme...apparently i cannot choose a different scheme for each partition.
so when i format the drive with GUID, the FAT32 partition is not even recognized by windows XP. but when i format the drive with master boot record (MBR), the HFS+ partition is not bootable...
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Jan 19, 2008
I have an external hard drive that I was previously using on PC, having attempted to use it on a Mac, it will not write to it. I've found that I have to format to FAT32, which I think i can just about manage (yes, im a girl) but my concern is, if i format through the MAC, will i then lose what's on the hard disk as the tab says 'erase'? I have a lot of images on the hard disk so am a little petrified! Any advice for this really basic question would be appreciated!
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Jan 23, 2010
I can't manage to format my Seagate 500GB external HD correctly so it can be readable with my Macbook. I formatted like six times already in Windows 7 and XP to NTFS and still my macbook won't read it...only my Windows computers can read/write it. What am I doing wrong?
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Aug 6, 2010
Simply looking for an application, preferably free, that will allow me to write to my NTFS external HD. I had this external as FAT32 before which was not problematic until I started downloading 720 and 1080 .mkv movies that were larger than 4gb. So I reformatted to NTFS which will accept files larger than 4gb but realized that OSX don't be got the ability to write to NTFS.
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Apr 14, 2012
I have two external hard disks, one formatted as FAT32 and another formatted as NTFS .Both cannot be seen in Finder when plug in. Only another one formatted MAC OS extended can. how to dispay my drive in the Finder (I don't want to reformat it as I have lot of contents and need to be read in my window computer.)Im running Mac OS 10.7.3 on my iMAC
Info:iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
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Jul 1, 2009
im running windows 7 allongside osx but the problem is natively osx has no ntfs write driver only read so there are 3rd party drivers but im getting tiered of them being slow and/or corrupting data and on the windows side i use macdrive has issues aswell so i want to convert the ntfs drive to fat32 i heard there were ways to get vista to run on fat32 even though it wouldnt install so im hoping this is the same
anyone know how i could achieve converting the driver from ntfs to fat without loosing data?
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Dec 25, 2008
I am using this guide to get a new HD into my PS3: [URL:...] It says that the HD I back my PS3 up to needs to be formatted to FAT32. I have an external HD that I use with my mac, its partitioned into 4 parts. I have one partition which I don't use which I want to back my PS3 onto. In Disk Utility I select that partition and I only get 4 option under the Erase tab, 4 different Mac OS Extended options.
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Oct 15, 2009
Probably about 10 years ago I was a big techie with DOS and all that, and now I seem to have forgotten how to do anything!
Two questions.
i) My iMac, which I bought last year has run out of HDD space. What can I do to extend it? I really can't work out what I have filled it up with as I have only
8.5gb in my applications folder
4.7gb in the systems folder
9.1 GB in the libary
40.18GB in the users bit (of which 32gb is music on iTunes)
Other than the standard applications I have a DOS emulator, Office and Spore.
But apparently I have used 200gb?!?!? I can't find where this disk space is being used up. Any ideas on what I can check to clear this out? I put a partition in to possibly install windows, how do I check that's been removed correctly?
Also if I plug in a USB drive to extend the memory how can I get the mac running as if this was actually the normal drive for this computer?
And question ii)
I have a PS3 which I want to back up my info on, but its on a FAT32 format. Can I format a USB HDD in FAT32 using my Mac?
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Oct 24, 2008
I'm using an external drive through FireWire 400 on my MacBook Pro with 10.5.5. It's a 320GB with 22GB in "free space" and the rest formatted with HFS+ (used as a Time Machine backup drive). I want to setup that 22GB as a FAT32 partition to be writable in both Windows and Mac. Normally, it sounds like I'm supposed to use Disk Utility on Mac and just choose MS-DOS(FAT). Unfortunately, that choice is not presented. I can choose four different Mac-based file systems, but not FAT. Why doesn't that show up as a choice? I've tried leaving it as free space and using a PC to format it. I've tried formatting it as a Mac-based drive and using the PC to format. I've even tried installing MacDrive on the PC and using that to format it as FAT32.
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Aug 19, 2009
I've got an external drive (320GB) that I'm trying to format as FAT32 using Disk Utility, then create a large (as in, most of the drive) HFS partition.
The problem is that no matter what I do, it will only format the drive as Mac Journaled. It lets me select other options (Mac, FAT32) and goes through the process with no errors or warnings, but when I click on the drive it remains Journaled with a partition of whatever I just selected.
I am sure beyond the shadow of a doubt that I am selecting the drive itself, not the partition, when formatting. This is extremely frustrating. Google searches aren't turning up any clues and I don't know what to do.
I have other external drives formatted as FAT32 with a large Mac partition so I know it's possible.
I need to do this so I can mount the drive on a Windows machine.
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Aug 30, 2014
Some time ago I had a problem with my iMac. Turned out my internal HD was broken so I got a new one.
The problem is that after I got my iMac with the new INTERNAL HD back, I was unable to write data on my EXTERNAL (Toshiba) HD, which until then I had no problems with. When I checked the format of it, it now says NTFS.Â
As I have more than 1 TB of data on it which would take forever to back up, is there another way to change it's status and write on it again? I was once able to do it, so I don't know where the problem is.....Â
Info:
iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9.4)
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Aug 29, 2014
I want to move from pc to mac but I'm struggle if it will support my flash drive format NTFS. Will it support ? or it support only FAT32 ?
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Jan 4, 2008
I'm intending on buying an iMac in a few days, just waiting for Macworld to come and go.
My question is this. I currently have 3 external Hard Drives on my PC. 2 x 360GB and 1 x 500GB. These contain MP3's, Photos/Videos, FLAC (Uncompressed Audio) respectively. Each disc is probably around 2 thirds full. They are all in formatted to NTFS.
Is there anyway that I can convert them to FAT32 without losing the Data so that the iMac can Read and Write to them when I swap them over to the Mac? (and is this even a good idea as I understand that FAT32 is extremely inefficient with volumes of this size)
The only alternative I can think off is to copy everything from the disks to the internal mac drive, reformat the USB drive for the mac and then copy everything back..
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Sep 24, 2009
I wanted a larger Windows partition so I went into Boot Camp assistant and deleted the Windows partition, made a new one and proceeded to insert my Windows CD. It went through the installation process and i selected the right drive/partition to have a quick NTFS format. After the format, my MacBook restarted and stalled. Needless to say, Boot Camp ran a quick NTFS format on the entire drive.
Now, is there any way to recover any of the files that were quickly formatted? Is there any good software out there that may be able to recover anything?
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Apr 11, 2009
I have a fall 2008 model macbook, 2.4 GHz 4GB ram, etc. I run windows XP SP3 on bootcamp, with a fat32 partition. I believe the external harddrive I run games from is also fat32 formatted.
I've had enough problems with transferring files over 4GB that i've decided to attempt to convert from fat32 to ntfs. I'd like to do it while on my windows partition, with the CONVERT C: /FS:NTFS in the command prompt. What precautions should I take before I attempt this? How difficult will it be to also convert my external drive to ntfs? Will anything be deleted in the process? Will I still be able to use parallels?
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Nov 15, 2009
i am trying to install Windows on my Mac. i created the partition (+/- 20gigs) and ive inserted the Windows disc. the installation works fine although i noticed that i don't get the page that gives me the option to choose between ntfs or fat32... yet it continues, and says windows is installed... but when it reboots, it goes directly to my mac-osx
im not too good with computers but i've managed to find a lot of threads that were talking about my problem but none of them could really correct the problem.
some people said that it might be the version of windows that could be the source of the problem.
i have Windows Xp Corporate version. might that be the problem?
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Mar 27, 2012
I receive my new iMac (27', 16GB Ram, 3.4Ghz i7, 2GB Graphic card). Time machine restore was perfect. Then I ran Bootcamp Partition. Then I have launched win 7 DVD install, Quick Format in NTFS and restore from win7 backup. Well Win 7 run well (with bootcamp 4.0). I can restart under Mac OS X Lion. And there the BootCamp Volume appears empty as a FAT32 Volume. I have tried to unmount it, then try a mount_ntfs (i/o error message in terminal). So annoying with that because I can't browse my NTFS Vootcamp and can't launch my BootCamp Win 7 through Vmware fusion (4)!
Info:
iMac, Other OS, Windows 2008 R2
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Jan 24, 2010
I just bout this Western Digital External Hard drive, Passport SE. Anyways, I formatted it to MS-DOS (FAT) so I can use on mac and/or windows. One of the other main reasons I bought it was so I could use it to watch videos on my Xbox 360.
Now I've seen tutorials online with windows how to re-format it to FAT32 so it works properly on xbox 360 but cannot figure it out on mac? On some of the tutorials they use certain programs to do it, is there something like that for mac I can download? Is fat32 and fat the same? I know there has to be a way for me to be able to format it to FAT32 using mac.
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Jun 5, 2012
what are the disadvantages of formatting an external drive as FAT32?
Info:
MacBook Pro
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Nov 5, 2009
I'm running Snow Leopard on my new Macbook Pro. I've got a 1.5TB External hard drive that I'm trying to figure out how to format in HFS+ with Apple Partition Map. I can figure out how to format in HFS using Disk Utility, however it still does it in GUID format and I do not know how to do it in Apple Partition Map.
Googleing this for hours has lead with all kinds of information on how to go to GUID FROM Apple Partition Map but not the other way around. I know GUID is the new hottness.. but this drive will be used exclusively to connect to my XBOX 360 and it supposedly only reads HFS+ when its formatted with Apple Partition Map. (I have tried it with Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with GUID, and the XBOX does NOT recognize it) I do not want to use Fat 32, (I know that that is the other major option) beacuse it limits file size.
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Aug 21, 2010
Was just wondering that are there any backup apps similar to Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper that support formats others than HFS+. I did search via MRoogle but couldn't find anything. I would just like to have an automated backup of my home folder that can be accessed with a PC as well
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Dec 29, 2008
While using my MacBook to access an external drive which is formatted Fat32, I attempted to slightly alter the name of a file with a particularly long file name. Once I changed the name, the file extension was cropped, and the file became inaccessible. Now I can see that the file is there (with no extension at the end of the name), but if I click on it or highlight it, it just disappears, and when visible, in place of the file icon there is just a dashed line box. The file is also visible with Terminal, but if I try to take any action Terminal reports that there is "no such file or directory."
I tried DiskUtility, DiskWarrior and File Buddy but apparently they don't work too well with the Fat32 format. I also tried repairing permissions, restarting the computer, disconnecting and reconnecting the hard drive, and also rebuilding the desktop (?) using alt-command on startup...all to no avail. It's clear what happened: I screwed up - I should have reformatted the drive before I put any files on it, right? But now, I just want my file back. I know it's there. I can see it, and I'm afraid to alter the drive in any way until I can access this file.
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Jan 29, 2010
I have a 1/3 full external drive that is currently formatted for MAC OS External.
I want to partition the drive in half and use the 2nd partition for Windows FAT32.
However, when I try to do this with Disk Utility it does not give me the FAT32 option.
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Jun 24, 2009
i'm looking into buying a 500GB WD My Passport Studio Edition for my 17" MacBook Pro...
I've been reading online that people are having issues with the FAT32 Formatted Passports not being recognized with the FireWire but work fine via USB 2.0...
is there truth to this problem with the FireWire and is anyone else having such issues? I've been all over and see the problem, but no solution or results.
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