Windows On Mac :: Will Disk Utility Format My Partition To FAT32
Feb 5, 2009
I noticed in disc utility that under the erase tab it has the option to format a drive to fat32. If I create a windows partition using bootcamp and then go into disk utility and erase to fat32 will this allow a boot into the xp drive? My xp disc keeps restarting before it gives me the opportunity to format the drive to either a ntfs or a fat so I need a way around this?
I had windows vista installed but suddenly the audio decided to become faulty, after spending a day trying to fix it i realized I have a windows 7 install disc so i might as well just replace vista with windows 7. I didnt take care of vista or ever register it so it became quite a task to upgrade so i just deleted the partition and went to create a new one and just do a full install of windows 7.
I made the partition but the wrong format, so i removed it through boot camp assistant and created another, except now it keeps giving me the "back up the disk and use disk utility to format it as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume. Restore your information to the disk and try using boot camp assistant again" Now, I'd love to do this, except I have no idea what I'm doing and WHY this error has occured. After becoming frustrated I switched from my imac to my macbook pro and received the same error when trying to create a partition. So any help on exactly what I need to do would be a HUGE help. I only use windows for music production (I know, seems backwards, but I use Sony Acid and FL Studio so I'm stuck with Windows)
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.
The hard drive is a 1TB Western Digital my book I bought it in January I think. I tried to format it to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) when I got it but for some reason every time I try to erase the part thats named disk3s2 or partition the main one it stops a little before half way through. I don't think its the hard drives fault so I called apple about it one day and they helped a little but it didn't work. Thanks in advance if you can help me. Also a few times I waited about seven hours for it while I was at school and when I came home it didn't move.
First some background info. I recently purchased a 1TB hard drive for my 13" MBP, and I am about to do a clean install of OSX 10.6 and Win7 64bit on separate partitions.
And I want to setup the partitions before I install using Disk Utility. The reason for this is because I'm under the assumption that when creating a NTFS partition its better for the disk to be blank so it can put the MFT(Master file table) and MFT Mirror wherever it wants instead of some random spot on the disk (that way disk writes will be faster). The MFT thing was true when converting a FAT32 disk to NTFS. Nativity formatted NTFS disks were always faster then ones converted from FAT32, because the MFT was spread out instead of at the start of the disk.
I'm worried that installing OSX and then using the bootcamp utility will cause the MFT on my NTFS partition to end up in a un-optimal place and disk Reads/Writes will be slower.
Ok, so here's my questions.
1.) Should I be using a GUID Partition Table or Master Boot Record(Remember OSX 10.6 and Win7)?
2.) Should I use Disk Utility to Create a the OSX partition and then leave the second partition as Free Space? / Or should I use a third party utility and make the OSX partition and the NTFS partition at the same time?
3.) If I do create the partitions Manualy, will bootcamp still work correctly?
4.) Should I Use Journaled or Case-Sensitive Journaled on my OSX partition?
I know all of the questions were stupid, but there isn't any info on the web about it.
I am having an issue Partitioning my Internal HDD because some files cannot be moved it was able to Partition a while back when Installed Vista but I deleted that Partition as I needed a bigger one for Windows 7 Beta It says I need to "Back up the disk and use Disk Utility to format it as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume." does that mean I have to reformat my entire HDD? as I don't want to do that.
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.
so i got this message "Back up the disk and use Disk Utility to format it as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume. Restore your information to the disk and try using Boot Camp Assistant again." what do I do
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?
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.
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...
My Computer: 2.8 GHz intel Core 2 Duo Mac, running OS X Ver. 10.5.8. I've partitioned my hard drive before, but in order to get more space on my Windows partition I have made a disk image using a program called Winclone. I also backed up important files to my external hard drive, and then used disk utility to erase and make a new partition so I could restore the Winclone disk image I made and have everything back. What I'm concerned about is I've been waiting for this new partition (65 GB) to finish being made and its taking a while. I read that if you stop the process it could damage the OS X side and you could lose all your files.
I started to run time machine about 10 minutes ago and set the destination to my external drive for backup (Its a huge drive, it can hold 650+ GB so I'm not worried about running out of space.) Do I stop Disk Utility and risk it? Do I let it run? Do I kiss my computer goodbye and pray that Time Machine backed everything up right onto my external hard drive? I don't know if Time Machine is working correctly because I started it after I began to partition my hard drive. What to do. Should I let Time Machine back everything up, the disconnect my external and end Disk Utility?
I am planning to upgrade my Windows 7 32 bit bootcamp partition to Windows 7 64 bit. I know I have to do a clean install to do this, so I am planning to wipe my Windows partition and start from scratch. I am trying to figure out how to remove my bootcamp partition though. If I use the bootcamp assistant, it seems like it will only give me 231gb of space back for Mac OSX. I have a 250gb HD, so where is the extra space going since my Windows partition is 42gb? Can I just delete it with Disk Utility to recover the space back? Could I possibly screw this up by using Disk Utility?
i've installed a new Hard disk on My G5 that was before installed in a pc (NTFS), now i'm trying to format it in FAT32 in the Mac!! no way!! i don't know how!
I can boot into bootcamp with no problems. I have been wanting to be able to open the bootcamp in Parallels. Here is the issue:
1. The partition 'disk0s3' is greyed out in Disk Utility. It is not mounted. Mounting does nothing.
2. For reference, the Windows 7 is formatted as NTFS. It is a Windows 7 64-bit install
3. Verify disk does the following: Verifying volume "disk0s3" ** /dev/disk0s3 Invalid BS_jmpBoot in boot block: efbbbf Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.
4. repairing does the following: Verify and Repair volume "disk0s3" ** /dev/disk0s3 Invalid BS_jmpBoot in boot block: efbbbf Volume repair complete.Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.Error: Disk Utility can"t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.
I have stuff on the Windows partition that I don't want deleted. I'm really stuck on this -obviously, I can just continue to boot into bootcamp, I just would rather open it from Parallels. I'm not sure what or if I made some mistake in setting up Bootcamp, I thought I followed the directions to that. I do know I formatted the partition as NTFS during the install - as I think Windows 7 requires it. I have tried installing NTFS-3G - it is installed, but didn't do any good when trying to mount the drive.
I can't find my windows partition it just shows as Macintosh HD. Although when I go into bootcamp it shows there is still 20gb assigned to windows but I screwed it up as I tried to extend the amount of GB I allowed to windows without reinstalling it. However I don't know what to do in Disk Utility now?
Model Name:MacBook Pro Model Identifier:MacBookPro7,1 Processor Name:Intel Core 2 Duo Processor Speed:2.4 GHz Number Of Processors:1 Total Number Of Cores: 2 L2 Cache:3 MB Memory:4 GB Bus Speed:1.07 GHz Boot ROM Version:MBP71.0039.B0B SMC Version (system):1.62f6
I have to do a back up (I'm cutting in Avid) on this FAT32 volume (for interoperability it is formatted this way), but I can't mount it via the Disk Utility or the 'mount' command in Terminal (it doesn't list the device, despite seeing it in Disk Utility - the volume is greyed out).The drive is connected via Firewire 400 and 800, USB is not available (to few slots).
I would like to "Back-up", "Clone" or create an "Image" or whatever else people call it of my bootcamp installation. I know I can create an "Image" of bootcamp via disk utility but how would I restore it?
Would I first delete the bootcamp partition and then re-create a bootcamp partition and then restore? Or would I just restore? Will the end result be what I am expecting, i.e., my Win 7 install right back to the perfect state of when I created the image?
Right now, let's say my Windows 7 install got smoked one day for whatever reason (it is windows...) and I needed to re-install. Me personally, I would just go into Bootcamp Assistant, delete the Windows partition then create a new one and then get installing. Unfortunately installing and updating takes hours and that is what I am trying to avoid.
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
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.
The partition "Bootcamp" can be seen from OSX, but when I restart and use the option button to select an OS, it just hangs up on a white screen and never loads the choices. Booting without the option button defaults to OSX. I have also tried to repair the disk in disk utility. I can definitely wipe the partition and reload XP, but I'd love an alternative. I've backed up the XP partition on a different HDD, so I'm ready to go. As this is my work rig, I have to get this resolved correctly.
I have 43GB available on a 120GB drive on my MacBook base model and I'm trying to partition via BootCamp.I'm trying to allocate 32GB to the Windows partition but I keep getting the following error message:Back up the disk and use Disk Utility to format it as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume. Restore your information to the disk and try using Boot Camp Assistant again.Now I've backed up my disk and launched disk utility, and try to follow above directions here but the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) area is grayed out and when I click apply after highlighting the MacBook are (in blue), it errors out and says the disk is out of space.
I have a problem with Disk Utility , when trying to format an external fire wire drive.
I cleaned out the drive and proceeded to erase it with zeros. After this Disk utility will not display the subdirectory or verify, repair, partition, erase the disk. The main disk name is still visible, but I cant access any functions. Error message says input output error.
DiskWarrior will not help, as the original directory is beyond recovery.
I suppose that I have damaged the original directory, and now I would ask the honourable forum if there is any remedy for my actions?
I set up a triple-boot system on my MBP (Early 2008) with OS X SL, ubuntu 9.10 and Windows 7 Home Premium. I have a 500GB Hard Drive, and allocated 100 GB for Mac OS X, 60 GB for Windows 7, 40 GB for ubuntu, and the remainder I formatted as FAT32 for storage to share between the three operating systems (to hold iTunes and iPhoto libraries, movies, etc).
I use rEFIt as my bootloader, and all three operating systems happily load whenever I choose them to. The problem lies with the FAT32 storage partition. OS X recognizes it quite nicely and I use it regularly. Windows and ubuntu, however, do not mount it. What's more, Windows Disk Manager identifies the space as unallocated space.
I have an external hard drive that I'm planning to use for my iTunes Music library, however, I plan to access the hard drive from both my Mac and Windows PC.
Now I know I could format it as FAT32 (MS-Dos Format) in Disk Utility, however, from my understanding, this wont allow files larger than 4GB ... which could be a problem in future.
If I were to format it as the Mac Journal extended format, would I still be able to read and write to this from my Windows PC? Any ideas, or other work arounds for this?
I have a 2TB Western Digital My Book Studio FW800 external that has 5 partitions, connected to my 2011 iMac. I had help doing the partitions and don't really remember the reasoning, but one is just for my SuperDuper! backup, one is Miscellaneous, one for movie clips off my camcorder, one for misc scanned photo's and one for my genealogy research. I back up using Time Machine to a Time Capsule and also to this WD hard drive with SuperDuper!
Recently I'm getting a pop up message that "Mac OS X can't repair the disk "Genealogy"'. And it needs to be reformatted. It's become a read only disk. When I look in Disk Utility it shows all the partitions as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" EXCEPT for the one in question. I also noticed that there are a lot of files with "date created" being the same date in 1969! These files may be letters I've written or photo's I added to that partition within the last few years.
I think I have to completely reformat the entire external hard drive to repair this, but I want to make sure. Because it's going to be a major hassle backing it all up to another external (having to get one first) and then figuring out how to make the files that have turned "read only" in that one partition, back to their original state! Does this sound right, that I have to reformat the entire external hard drive? And how do I get the read-only files back to their original state.
Anyone knows why my external HD (USB disk connected to Airport extreme) does not show up in disk utility? (It sits on my desktop just fine and is fully functional) I' want to erase a partition but now i don't know how.
I have run the Disk Utility verify function against my system partition. It tells me there are minor issues that need fixing up and I should run the repair disk function, by booting using Command-R and using the Disk Utility to repair the drive.Problem is, when I boot using Command-R and select Disk Utility the partition is shown greyed out and the Verify and Repair options do not work.I think this could be because the partition is encrypted. The utility does not offer me the chance to unlock the partition with my passphrase.How can I repair the filesystem errors on this partition?
I have an 8gb SecureLock Media memory stick and I cant write to it its currently formatted to FAT32 and was working perfectly fine before, it allows my to drag files of it but i cannot write to it, I can't reformat in disk utility.