I read in this thread that hard drives have to be formatted with HFS+ to work with OS X. I want to buy a hard drive on eBay that is wiped clean but formatted with NTFS; my question is this, how can I reformat the hard drive to work in my yet-to-arrive MacBook?
View 8 RepliesI recently bought a 640 GB Comstar external hard drive for my macbook, and it came out of the box formatted in NTFS. I know that if the drive was in this format, I could not use it with my mac. So I opened up disk utility and tried to reformat it into Mac OS Extended (Journaled), but disk utility showed an error and the drive wasn't reformatted. So I tried FAT32 instead, and it worked. The drive has been working fine now, however, I have realized a limitation of FAT32: the files can only be smaller than 4 GB. This is a problem for me, so I need some advice. So here is my dilemma: I need to be able to share the contents of the drive over a local network that has both windows and mac computers. (Users on the network only need to be able to read the drive, not necessarily write). However, I can't use FAT32 because of the file size limitation. I'm not sure how to format the drive so that I (using my mac) can read and write it, and users on the local network can read it. I'm thinking HFS+ (mac os extended, journaled), but will windows users be able to read it then?
View 4 Replies View RelatedHow long should it take to reformat an empty external hard drive? It's a GForce MegaDisk two terabyte hard drive and it's been going for about 11 hours with no sign of stoping.
Shouldn't it be pretty quick, since the hard drive is empty?
I had to reformat my hard drive due to some bug I had. I don't have Apple hardware, but did have Quicktime (Pro?)- the version where you can create a .mov. I have forgotten how to download the software, and don't have an installment disk.
View 1 Replies View Relatedl I now have to completely wipe, re-format and re-load OSX onto my iMac's internal HD, My iMac is a late 2009 27" and at present has OSX 10.8.5 loaded, ( loaded but with many miss-functions ). Prior to the problem the iMac was running OSX Lion, what version though I can't remember.I installed 10.8.5 the other day to see if that would fix things, but it hasn't. It was not a "clean install", just regular one from downloaded OSX 10.8.5.
I have run Disk Utility and TechTool Pro' 7 to try to make repairs to address the problems so far to no avail. Main problems are that my most used applications, FCP-7 Studio, Aperture and Photoshop CS5 amongst others, open but then immediately crash. I've reloaded the troubled applications, de-installed them properly with de-installation app's then clean re-installed them, but that's made no difference. They will not mount.
I reckon there must be a fault or corruption on the HD, probably caused during the Optimisation as everything was functioning well before I did that. So, the only OSX install disks I have are the original disks that came with the iMac, OSX 10.6.2 and a Snow Leopard Upgrade DVD OSX 10.6. I do have the downloaded copy of OSX Mountain Lion that I pulled from the App Store the other day and that copy is now on an external USB / Firewire 800 HD.Â
As I said I would like to be able to clean off the iMac's internal 2tb drive completely and install a fresh newer OSX. If I first have to load OSX.6.2 then upgrade via the App Store that's fine, but I'd rather just go straight to Mountain Lion if possible. Whatever works best. Getting rid of any corruption on the iMac's HD is the prime motivation.Â
All my applications and files are backed up to a 2tb LaCie external drive.The iMac has approximately 900 gb's of content onboard and the rest is free / unused space.
I am running version 10.6.8 and the operating software is Snow Leapord. I want to upgrade to Lion but firstly I want to back-up my files just incase s*** happens. I've bought a used 500gb external hard drive and I understand it's in the NTFS (Windows NT File System) format. Although I am able to view what's on the hard drive as well as use it, for example, open photos, watch movies, I cannot delete anything on it. I could get a mac compatible hard drive but that's going to be at an extra cost.
Info:
Mac OS X (10.6.7)
I have a WD 640GB External drive and i would like to partition some for time machine and some for storing my files. i just have some questions:
1) If i partition the drive into 2, in the future can i join the two partitions together again?
2) does the whole external drive have to have the same file system like HFS or NTFS or can one partition be HFS + for time machine and the other partition NTFS to make it readable on windows?
I have a wd external hard drive formatted in ntfs and am now buying my 1st mb air. if i buy a new mac approved hard drive and copy all my old files to the new hard drive using my pc, will i be able to both read and write on my new mac book? what if i used the mac book to copy the 2 hard drives to take advantage of the faster usb 3's would that still work?
View 10 Replies View RelatedI'm new to Mac so I'm sure its user error.
I recently bought a Macbook and I have a external USB hard drive that is formatted NTFS. I copied all of the files off of external HD and pasted them on my Macbook. I slicked the external hard drive and formatted it as FAT32 so I could read & write on both a PC and Mac if I need.
Anyways, once the external hard drive was formatted I tried moving all of the files back to the external but I keep getting and error code once I paste the files on the external drive. It says: "Sorry, the operation could not be completed because an unexpected error occurred. Error code 0"
Now I'm not sure if the files are locked or what but I need help. I want to move them back to the external drive. It actually copies a few files to the external but nowhere near what all I need. They are just some .doc files that are on there
This is a tutorial for people looking to clone their internal hard drive and install it into their macbook (usually because you've upgraded to a larger hdd). I have also included an installation of windows vis a vis boot camp style. Ive been battling this for the past 3 days, so hopefully this tutorial will answer some questions and save you some time.
1. Firstly get your external drive (clone) ready. Go to applications---->utilities---->disk utility. Click on your external drive and then partition it. I used 2 partitions, one for mac (200 GB) and one for windows (40 GB). For now partition in GUID partition format (found in options). This is important. You can check whether it actually as in GUID at the end of the format when you click on the drive and on the bottom part of the screen it will give you all the drive information. (NOTE: if you have a standard windows installation you can have 1 partition at this stage and then later let boot camp create a partition for you. Boot camp will only format in FAT, so all windows using NTFS are out of luck)..............
After a lifetime of owning PC's I finally purchased a MacBook Pro running OS X. I installed Parallels Desktop 5, Windows XP, and several Windows apps to have dual functionality. Now I need to write to my NTFS ext. hard drive where I backup everything. It has 800gb of space left, so it would be a shame to get a new one just b/c I have a Mac now. I first installed MacFuse and then NTFS-3G. Now when I reboot, the ext. HD won't mount at all. What have I done wrong?
View 6 Replies View RelatedI 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?
View 4 Replies View RelatedI am in need of assistance with backing up my macbook pro using time machine. I am running Mac OS X leopard 10.5.8. I have attempted to backup to a network share folder on a Windows machine, but the backup abruptly ends. So, I decided to attach an NTFS external drive, connected via usb. The external drive was formatted on a Windows 7 machine (not quick format); so, it currently has no space occupied. I installed MacFuse and NTFS-3G. Then, I rebooted and attached the NTFS external drive. I set the preferences in time machine to backup to the aforementioned drive. However, Console is reporting that the backup failed with error 19, and time machine is reporting that the storage location for backups cannot be found, when i command time machine to backup now.
Is there something I'm missing? I have seen at least one other thread on the Internet where a mac user was able to get time machine to work with an NTFS external hard drive. Do I need to create a separate sparse bundle image and copy it to the external drive, similar to the method used to get time machine to copy to network shares on Windows? If the ironclad rule is time machine ONLY recognizes HFS+ drives, then a sparse bundle image is a good workaround. But then what is the point of MacFUSE and NTFS-3G. What is its purpose, as it relates to time machine?
I have an external hard drive that I use to watch movies on a Nintendo Wii and some of the movie files are over 7GB, which means when I format the drive to FAT32 I cannot copy the larger files. What are my options for getting around this problem? I have VMware fusion but I cannot easily see my external drive in XP. Is it possible to format the drive in XP and then transfer everything via VMware on XP?
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
I've recently converted to the Mac-side:
I'm having difficulty with my external hard-drive, here's the info on that one:Â
Disk Utility won't allow me to mount the drive, I've tried using a number of softwares to read it (working under the assumption that it's an NTFS drive), including Tuxera and Paragon. I have too much stored on the hard drive to empty it back onto my old computer, and so I'm not able order to re-format it.
Info:
MacBook Air, OS X Mavericks (10.9.4)
My Seagate hard rive is saying that it is formatted NTFS when I plug it into my new mac. I have only ever used it on a mac and it didn't ever say this when i used it on my old computer.. Im not quite sure what to do because I have no where to put all my stuff to reformat it?
Also I made sure when I bought the hard drive that it was both windows and mac compatible...
Info:
Mac Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.4)
I'm looking for a FREE data recovery app for os x to recover data from a NTFS hard drive. The hard has lost it's volume and will not mount and I've tried some other programs and I can see the files but I can't get them off because every program I've tried isn't free and won't let me copy them off. I've tried looking for one but I can't seem to find a good one. I just want to copy off the files and then I'll wipe the drive and fix the parition.
View 5 Replies View RelatedIs it possible by any means to transfer mac files onto a windows “NTFS" formatted external hard drive...?? Â
Info:
MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5)
Many times in the past I have had to reformat USB drives once I have bough them so that they will work properly with my Macs and have never had any problems. I was just about to buy a USB online and thought I would check the Q&A for anything suspicious. Someone had asked the question; "is it possible to use this drive with a Mac", and someone from the store replied; "No, and it is not possible to reformat".Â
The drive is a Toshiba 500GB Canvio Basics USB3. Can some drives not be reformatted as this bloke seems to think or does he not know what he is talking about?Â
I have attached screenshots from the site.
I have a new external Hard Drive and I am trying to reformat it to Mac OS Journaled however It will not let me stating that "The underlying task reported failure on exit". However I am able to reformat it to MS-DOS and change the name of the drive but I am still not able to reformat it to MAC OS. Anyone have any ideas or should I give Western Digital a ring tomorrow?
View 1 Replies View RelatedI am reformatting an internal hard drive in an enclosure to use as a media storage drive. I attempted to reformat the drive and partition it as a Mac OS X Extended however it will not erase the current volume and reformat. The volume on there currently is literally the HD with the old OS and Files and such on it, so am I missing a step in the reformatting process? Do I need to reformat as Free Space or FAT or what?
View 11 Replies View RelatedI have a 24" 2.66Ghz 4GB RAM iMac with 640GBs of internal HDD space, and a 2TB external drive I use to store stuff. About a month ago I tried partitioning the drive during an ubuntu install, and it messed the [external] drive up. I have had some more problems caused by the install (OS X didn't boot, didn't show up when restarting+alt etc.), so I had backed up my entire internal drive to my 2TB external one, and re-formatted my HDD.
Everything went back to normal, till I noticed I have ~600GBs missing from my 2TB drive. I tried iPartition and it shows that I have 20KBs or something like that that are used by the filesystem, and no other partitions (so my drive has one partition and everything's supposed to be there). I'll provide you with a DW log shortly. What can I do to get my 600GBs back?
I would like to reformat my previously partitioned startup drive into a single partition. (G4 dual 533 running OS 10.4.11) I have carbon-cloned the startup drive contents to an external fire-wire drive which I hope to re-transfer back after reformatting my original drive into a single partition. I have designated the fire-wire drive to be the new startup disc.
View 2 Replies View RelatedI am running an early 08 MBP w/os10.7.3.I really screwed up this morning with a backup disk. my backup system consists of several external, stand alone drives and a HD dock and several internal HDs that plug into that dock.I had a stand alone Iomega/200G/USB that i wiped to give my son who doesn't "get" backups yet. I simultaneously had the USB dock plugged in w/ a Samsung 1.5TB HD powered on. I had moved the Iomega data to the Samsung prior to erasing the Iomega w/ Disk Utility. I had chosen the 7pass wipe on the iomega last night following the data transfer. it had completed 2 passes this morning w/ fourteen hours still showing til completion. i decided that three was plenty and disconnected the iomega to reconnect and select the 3 pass option to expedite. USB dock w/Samsung still powered on and plugged into MBP. disk utility defaulted to the samsung when iomega was ejected. I hit the three pass option and started the wipe without seeing Disk Utility default to the samsung. I did immediately see the flashing red data transfer light on the dock come on and realized my mistake. Immediately disconnected the USB HD dock. Disk Utility was showing "preparing disk" in its status bar. It appears that the formatting has been wiped as reconnecting the dock gives me a "the disk is not readable by this computer". I'm sure the data is still there, but the disk needs to be reformatted. The disk appears in the disk utility sidebar. all disk repair options are greyed out.
I am considering using partition in Disk Utility as that would reformat the samsung disk. However, the data on the disk would normally appear as a blue segment on the rectangular disk setup diagram. there is no blue. According to partition docs, you can partition a disk w/out the data being wiped. However, if the disk is unreadable when the partition process starts, will it wipe all the data as it partitions and reformats? Very reluctant to initiate this process w/out knowing more.
Info:
macbook pro, Mac OS X (10.7.2)
I need to reformat my iMac G5, but my optical drive doesn't work. How can I restore my iMac to factory settings and then reinstall from the purchased discs, Aperature, Final Draft and Final Cut Studio 7? Can I use my Ibook unibody's drive to somehow do this? Desperate to edit footage from my trip to South Sudan for CNN and NBC, and my macbook's screen has a 3 inch black line down the middle (that's another matter entirely!)... hence using the iMac. (Which by the way, has 2GB RAM.) Also, while I'm here, is it easy the replace the optical drive myself? I've successfully done it with my MacBook, but the imac looks like not possible.
Info:
iMac
I'm trying to reformat my MBP and I think I'm having a little trouble. This is the first time I've reformatted a mac. I put the OS X disk in, went into disk utility and did the erase. I then restarted, again booting on the disc and I've seen nothing but a white screen for the past 2 1/2 hours. The optical drive is making noises like it is reading, but I'm not sure if it can't read from the disk or it is actually formatting. Any ideas?
View 1 Replies View RelatedI really need to know where a NTFS disk is mounted at a Mac. Don't say the Desktop, or something like that. I need the mount directory. CDs/DVDs and pendrives are mounted at /Volumes. Where are NTFS disks mounted?
View 2 Replies View RelatedI need to recover some deleted pictures from my friends PC. Is there any program that will be able to read the NTFS formatted HDD?
View 4 Replies View RelatedThis is a thread for anyone who is experiencing a large slowdown and/or intermittent 10-60 second freezes on Mac OSX Snow Leopard, where the freezes are completely unrelated to anything you're doing, any app you're using, or whether the system is under heavy or little use. I found the issue stems from the use of Mac Fuse (with NTFS-3G installed) and/or Paragon NTFS for Mac OSX, the combination of these 2 apps essentially doing the same job (NTFS write support), conflicts and causes the hard drive to be under constant (although very little) use, which can randomly cause 30-60 second freezes. If anyone is experiencing these same freezes, uninstall either one app or the other, or both, and that might help remedy the situation. EDIT: updated because I didn't specifically mention which macFUSE plugin I had installed....
View 5 Replies View Related