I've never done anything but plug a HD in and get right to work. Now that I've got an Apple, I'm a total nervous Nellie.I just got a WD external hard drive that is FAT32. I understand that the Mac can read/write this format. Would you recommend that I change it to HFS+ or should I leave well enough alone?
View 20 RepliesI have a Western Digital 500gig external hard drive (model wd5000c032) which I'd like to completely reformat to use with my macbook pro and Time Machine (running os 10).As it is now, my mac can only use 147 gigs, and often gives an error message saying it needs additional space to backup. It was previously used on a pc to hold pictures, but I doubt it used anything near 357 gigs for that.
View 2 Replies View RelatedOn my vista / xp machines, I have several external hard drives, Seagate, WD, HP, and 1 enclosure kit which contains some old internal hard drive.I don't really need all these drives on my VISTA/XP machines, as I'm trying to migrate to MAC.
I mostly use my mac for photos & creating home movies. So backing up the priceless pictures of my kids is critical.Do I really need to buy a MAC based external hard drive? or can i simply reformat one of my old drives to use on my mac. I know macs have their own file system (as pc's have fat32&ntfs).
Will apple time machine work with a generic re-formatted external hard drive.I also notice their are fewer choices for MAC ready external hard drives ...less specials than PC based externals.
I have 2 WD External Hard Drive Im trying to copy files from one to the other it wont let me because its read only..
If i Reformat the one with the files so i can copy it using my imac would i lose my files in there?
I have a SimpleTech external HD that I want to reformat from PC to Mac. I went to disk utilities and selected "erase", but it will not erase the HD so that I can reformat it.
I have since attached it to my PC, but do not know how to erase/reformat on a PC (I'm a Mac user that only uses my PC for running specific programs). How can I erase this hard drive and reformat it?
I have been using my Seagate external hard drive for movies on my Windows PC and now I have a MacBook. I want to add more movies from my Macbook to the hard drive but it's read only. I want to drag these movies to the harddrive without loosing what's already on there. Can I reformat without loosing everything?
Info:MacBookPro
I purchased an external hard drive ( a Seagate 2 TB Expansion Desktop Drive) and was told by the MAC rep in the store to perform the following simple task to reformat the disk so I could drag and drop files from my iMAC and store them on the external hard drive:Â
1. Go to Disk Utility
2. Choose the External Hard Drive
3. Select Erase
4. Select MAC OS Extended (Journaled)
5. Click on Erase buttonÂ
Unfortunately when I do this, I get the following error: Disk erase Failed with Error: File system formatter failed? I have Mac OS X (10.5.8)...
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.5.8)
I try erasing it again and making sure it is formatted for MSDOS and still no luck. So I try partitioning and that is also no luck. 1 part for mac, other free space because no windows option was present
View 8 Replies View RelatedYesterday I reformatted my Macintosh hard drive, partitioned it, installed Snow Leopard on one partition and Windows 7 on the other. I installed all the drivers for Windows 7 from the Snow Leopard disc.
When I plug in my 1TB Seagate external hardrive it's not showing up in Snow Leopard or Windows 7. Not even in Disk Utility. I tried plugging the external drive into my Windows laptop and a pop-up comes up saying "USB Device Not Recognised. One of the USB devices attached to this computer has malfunctioned, and Windows does not recognise it." I think that this may just be because it's formatted to Mac OSX?
The hardrive had all of my photos, videos and music on so I hope it's salvageable. I find it hard to believe that the hard drive malfunctioned at the same time I reinstalled the software onto the iMac.
I purchased a Toshiba Canvio 3.0 external hard drive and I need to reformat it to work with my Mac.
View 2 Replies View RelatedI have an external hard drive upon which I put movie files that I view through a Sony box (like the Roku box). I brought my MacBook in for a repair and connected the same external HD and used Time Machine to make a back up. It did reformat it in order to do so, but since the Sony box isn't a pc or mac I didn't think it would make a difference, but now the Sony box won't recognize HD. Is there a way to reformat it on my MacBook so that I can use it on the Sony box again, or do I need to reformat it with a Windows computer? I had no issues when transferring files only and using the Sony box.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI recently purchased a 3TB Seagate® Expansion® external hard drive for PC. My plan is too reformat it so that I can use it, but it has been acting wierd on me. It says on Disk Utility that it is 4 gbs but I have a 3TB one. Im on OSX mavericks by the way.
View 5 Replies View RelatedHow do I reformat my external hard drive with Mac OS extended using desk utility?
Info:Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.8)
How do I reformat a USB external drive with two partitions one of which is corrupted.
Disk Utility will not work because the faulty partition prevents unmounting of the disk.
Info:
MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7.4), Macbook Air bought August 2011
I recently bought a macbook pro and am making the transition from a pc to mac. It's all gone well so far, but I'm not sure what to do with my music. I currently have about 200 gb of music on my external hard drive (connected to my pc.) The internal hard drive on my pc does not have space to accomodate the files on my external.
I do not have the "Copy files to iTunes music folder" currently enabled because my internal doesn't have space. (And I like having the original music files in a separate location as I have over 30,000 songs). I don't know how to transfer my external and music to my macbook, since I will have to reformat the drive (which would erase everything on it, therefore I somehow have to make a backup either on my mac or on my pc. but what to do about the iTunes .xml file and iTunes folder on the internal pc drive??).
How do I reformat an external hard disc, before used as time machine?
Info:
MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.6.8), Freecom hard disc
I have a WD Passport Portable hard drive which I use as a Time Machine for my iMac.I'm close to filling it up and I will be getting a bigger hard drive for it.I would like to use my WD hard drive again on my daughters PC so she can save her school work. I know it needs to be re-formatted to work with a PC again but I dont know how to do it.
View 4 Replies View RelatedHow do I reformat my hard drive?
Info:MacBookPro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
How do you reformat a MacBook Pro (OS X 10.7.3) 2011s Hard drive? I already backed up all the files I wanted to save. But since I have the new Macbook pro 2011 (only a few months since I got it) it didn't come with an installation disc, but instead already came with all the applications. I'm wondering how to reformat the hard drive so it wipes out everything and I can start fresh and what would happen to all the applications?
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
I have a 1 TB Lacie external drive. it was originally formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted). It also might have been formatted as a bootable drive, but I am not certain. Today I mounted the drive, entered the decrypt key and want to re-format the drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I am using Disk Utility to do this. When I click on Erase within Disk Utility, I get this error: I am using Mac OS X Mavericks. how to fix this so that I can re-format the drive?
Info:
iMac (27-inch, Late 2012), OS X Mavericks (10.9)
how do i reformat the hard drive on my macBook Pro 10.5.8 - dvd player doesn't work - otherwise what is the best way to delete stuff off the hd I want to keep the os on it.
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.8)
I have the Seagate Momentus XT and I have a quick question. If I reformat the Hard Drive portion does that erase the SSD side as well? If not how do I erase the SSD side of it.
View 1 Replies View RelatedMy Mac OS X Version 10.5.8 is 3 years old. I am having major problems with it. For the past 3 weeks now, everytime I try to use the Creative Suite 4 applications, the computer locks up...spins and spins and spins. I force quit when I can and oftentimes I cannot. I ran the disk utility from the Installation Disk and ran disk repair. The message that I received was a minor one but the problem continues....Vol Bit Map has minor problems. Does reformatting the hard drive is a good idea? It seems that I can get online with no problems. I have backed up all important files and am ready to reformat but want to make sure first that this option is the only one I have.
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.5.8)
The volume Macintosh HD was found corrupt and needs to be repaired. It's asking to run a recovery. Is this going to erase everything??Â
My storage says it's using 434GB of other. Whatever other is.....did I get a virus?
Info:
MacBook
Pro, iOS 5.1.1, Storage/Repair/Disk Utility
I have a question which I am quite unsure. I am shopping for a HDD drive (Western Digital My Book 3 TB) and was told that it cannot be reformatted to be compatible with TIme Machine.
I would like to verify if it is true.
Info:
iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9.3)
I upgraded to Lion by download and I need to reformat my hard drive. How can I reinstall Lion without a disk? I have a Time Machine backup of my hard drive on an external drive.
Info:
PowerBook G4, Mac OS X (10.4.1)
if i delete files off my internal hard drive (Macintosh HD), will it still be on my external hard drive or will it just add to it?
View 1 Replies View Relatedwith cloning/copying the content one an external hard drive onto a new external hard drive. Basically, I have a 500GB FW400 drive which I use to store my media files. It's full, so I purchased a 1TB FW800 drive to replace it. Obviously, I thought I could simply copy and paste the media files from the old drive to the new one.I cannot copy the media files to my internal drive first as my internal drive is only 250GB and nearly full itself.I have used Disk Utility to attempt to close the old drive to the new drive, but keep getting "insufficient space" errors.
View 9 Replies View RelatedRecently I bought 2 identical WD Scorpio Blue 1TB hard drives for my macbook pro 13 inch 2010. My aim is to replace the internal hard drive with one of the two I just purchased and use it as my system drive with Lion, Windows and Data partitions. And for the other hard drive I want to use it as a full disk back up for the internal drive (now 1TB hard drive). After I was done with setting up both windows and mac and data transfer, when I booedt into the recovery partition from the internal drive to clone the drive to the external drive, the disk utility gave me this error (Could not validate source - error 254). I also tried using Carbon Copy Cloner but it only could clone partitions, not the entire drive. Yesterday I downloaded a copy of Clonezilla. It worked fine until it had to clone an exFAT partition (my data partition). The exFAT partition appeared as 'RAW' partition in clonezilla. As a result, the whole partition appeared to be full and clonezilla had to copy every single blocks of data in that partition and the estimated time remaining was about 30 hours. So clonezilla is out too. Just want to ask if there is any program/application (bootable or not) which allows can do a full disk clone to an external hard drive.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI've had a lot of problems with my iMac G5 power supply and since I have newer computers I've decided to get rid of this computer.Â
I want to save the hard drive and put it in a case, then use it as an external drive on my other Macs.Â
What sort of case do I need to shop for? Should I look for SATA or what exactly is the proper nomenclature.Â
Is USB 2 the preferred choice, or Firewire, or what? Is there a USB 3? I use a mid-2010 27 inch iMac with the intel processor, and I needed to buy an adapter to use my older Firewire external drive. Is Firewire a dodo?Â
