I bought a WD My Book Essential to do Time Machine backups. It is formatted for a PC but I was told I need to format for my IMac before I can use it. How do I do that? Is it a complicated process? I have only been using a Mac for about a year now and am still learning about them.
View 3 Repliesgot a real basic question to ask and you're gonna think im an idiot for asking...I just bought a 320gb western digital elements hard drive and want to reformat it so that its compatible for both mac and pc's. i intend to format it as NTFS-3G as it would allow me to use it on the 2 platforms without having the 4GB file size restriction that fat32 has, anyway.....
when I go to reformat my external hard drive in disk utility, I see my external hard drive to the left, and there's a "sub" hard drive as a child of the external hd listed uppermost. just wandering which one of the two do i select before going to Erase>Windows NT filesystem (NTFS-3G)>erase? Do I select the uppermost drive and erase that or the lower one? or both
i have just bought and external hard drive and want to put stuff on it. i know i hav to format it somehow using disk utility on my imac. what do i format it to so i can use it on both mac and pc? it is set to read only in "get info" and ms-dos fat in disk utility.
View 6 Replies View RelatedI just got my new Seagate 640gb external hard drive and am in the process of formatting it on my MBP. However, I am not sure which format to do? My main use for the hard drive is for transferring media files back and forth between my MBP and PC using just one partition on the drive. I already know I'm not supposed to pick 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)' because I believe that is to use it as a boot drive. So should I pick 'Mac OS Extended' or maybe 'Free Space'?
View 12 Replies View RelatedI 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!
View 7 Replies View RelatedI just bought a new external hard drive and backed-up my computer onto it. Then today I realized that I didn't format the drive. All I did was follow instruction for hooking it up. Also, I'm a Mac user. Is it customary to do a full and proper format of newly purchased external hard drives? The most I did was verify the disk in disk utility when I first plugged in the HD to my computer. Is that enough?
View 5 Replies View RelatedI'm looking to format my external, which i did but one question under Info it says
Format : Mac OS Extended
Capacity : 999.86 GB
Available : 999.28 GB
Used : 579.4 MB on disk (579,424,256 bytes)
What is the used space about? When it should be 100% empty?
I received an Acomdata 2Tb external hard drive today from Amazon and plugged it in. Time Machine popped up and I declined to link the hard drive to it. I went into Disk Utility and chose the new hard drive on the left column and went to erase. I chose Mac OS Extended. I named it and hit erase. It started going, and going..... and going... and a half an hour later I knew something was wrong.
Disk Utility was not responding and I eventually had to Force Quit. Now I cannot format the hard drive. I starts and then it stops with a disk error. I tried to run the First Aid verify and repair and both stopped after a few seconds with an error. What do I do?
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.
if i can partition my Windows NFTS External Hard Drive. I do not want to format it because i have some important files and programs on my External Hard drive, But I also want to use it for Time Machine Backup. I was wondering if it was possible to Not format my Hard drive, Partition it, And then format the 2nd partition to Mac, and use it for time machine. I am using Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.8
The Capacity of the EHD is 55.9GB
Available: 37.1GB
Used: 18.8GB
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.
I have an external hard drive which I first used with my pc. It is formatted for NTFS. Now with my new MBP, I want to back up data, and I am having no luck. The external hard drive is a Verbatim brand, 500GB. On their website FAT32 download dosnt work! I have tried disk utility with no luck. What am I missing?
Info:
MacBook Pro (15-inch Early 2011), Mac OS X (10.6.8)
Ive recently purchased a new external hard drive. I plan to use it on both Apple and Windows OS.
I was told that if I do, then i could corrupt the files/data that I will be accessing on both computers.
Is there a "universal" format for an external drive which would prevent/avoid this kind of thing happening ? How should i format it or which format should i use so that i can use the drive both OS ?
Info:
MacBook Pro (13-inch Late 2011), Mac OS X (10.7)
My new iMac is arriving tomorrow and I need to transfer everything over to it. I know about Migration Assistant, but I want to know if there will be any complications due to the data I have on an external hard drive.
Specifically, I currently have an older (white) iMac hooked up to two 2TB external hard drives. One if for backup but the other one has all my iPhoto and iTunes content on it, including about 1.5 TB of movies and TV shows that I have ripped. None of this material is on the computer's internal hard drive - it is all on the external hard drive.
Because my new iMac has a 2 TB internal hard drive, I want to transfer all the iPhoto and iTunes content currently on the external hard drives onto the internal hard drive of the new iMac. Will Migration Assistant handle this and will it be clear what I need to do?
I'm praying someone can give me a miracle cure here but im pretty sure its a terminal case. i have a 24inch iMac 2.66ghz core 2 duo and a western digital 1tb external usb hard drive....this hard drive was bought a month or so ago with the sole purpose of store years and years of media to free up valuable space on my iMac hard drive....tonight without any warning at all the drive icon disappears from my desktop with an error message and now refuses to load, when i click initialise on the error dialogue box it takes me to disk utility.
in disk utility i have tried repairing disk and i get the message "invalid node structure". it then tells me it cannot be repaired and i need to re-format my hard drive.
as i said there is literally YEARS of info on this drive that i really really dont want to lose, is there anything i can do, or anything worth trying. as a side note on the front of the drive it has a capacity gauge and has gone from 3/4's full to not showing anything.
Can I use time machine to back up my data without formatting the external hard drive .. If not please let me know if there is a way to back up to hard drive without using time machine.. Thank you
View 5 Replies View RelatedI 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?
Yesterday 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 have a G5 Imac and a G4 ibook. i want to use time machine, and have one external hard drive connect to both. I could get an external with more than one input (ie, usb and firewire)--does that work? Could i use a usb hub to connect the 2 computers to the HD, and set up different partitions?
And what of NAS? i do not want to set up a whole network (we already have one at my office, and i want this to be independent).
Just put a new Hard Drive into my Imac Dual Core. I Know I need to start up from the CD drive to format the disk... I am holding down the "C" key at startup but it isn't reading the drive.
View 3 Replies View RelatedI just brought a Western Digital 1TB USB drive for my Mac Pro. Now when I try and format it in Mac OSX journaled it keeps coming up in an error saying it can't be done, It will format as FAT32 but I need it to be Mac OSX formatted. Does anyone know what might be wrong?
View 2 Replies View RelatedI just bought a new WD Elements (1tb) and I am getting an error when I try and format. I wish I could tell you what that error says but I was trying to figure something else out so I chose the disk6s1 and formatted it to os extended but it seems like it is frozen. I am afraid if I force quit it will screw up the drive. This is the 2nd one I have tried, I returned the 1st one thinking the drive was faulty. Now I think I screwed up the drive when I formatted it in disk utility. I have installed 2 western digital internal Hard Drives into my Pro and have used 2 other external HDs both western digitals. If there was any problems with any of my HDs, I would open up Disk Utility and Erase them to be Mac OS Extended (My WD TV won't read Journaled drives).
View 9 Replies View RelatedI am having issues with formatting my main drive in my Macbook Pro (mid 2009) to install Leopard.
I have booted off of several Leopard and Snow Leopard install discs and attempted to use Disk Utility to format my drive. Everytime I try to format the drive I get one of two errors: 1. input/output error OR 2. Unable to allocate memory.
I have tried using several hard drives.
I am going to be buying an external hard drive soon (Seagate FreeAgent Go 250GB 2.5" External Hard Drive - Black) and I want to double format Or double partition it. I am pretty good with macs, I just don't know much about time machine and external hard drives. What I want to do is either:
A) Make a partition in which I can make backups, and make a separate partition in which I can store files
B) Make a single partition in which I can save back ups (from time machine) and my files (Music, Movies, Applications)
Also, would I be able to run Windows (XP) from my external hard drive somehow? Also, could I run mac applications off my external hard drive, is there a certain procedure?
I bought a new 1TB external hard drive. What formats should I choose in Disk Utility to make this disc compatible with both Mac and Windows? I rarely have files over 2GB and my Mac is running on Snow Leopard.
View 4 Replies View RelatedVerbatim Store 'n' Go USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive 500Gb
this is a external hard drive i am looking to buy,but it has Nero back it up and burn software already on it,so in order for me to use it on my macbook,would i need to format it?
How do I format an external hard drive?
View 1 Replies View RelatedAlright, so My ipod is formatted for windows when formatted in this you can only copy chunks of 4 gig things using it as an external. but if you change the formatt of it to take all sizes, then it's not compatible with mac and pc. =/ i had it originally formatted for pc because i just recently got a mac book pro and it's my primary computer. well on to the hard drive trouble that is related i'm borrowing my friends external to get a 8 gig file from my pc to my mac. it's formatted in fat32(windows and mac read) but that format only allows for a 4 gig max to be put on it at one time. so i guess i'm outta luck there, i've looked at JR split but who knows it that will work. My main q is, i'm going to be getting my own personal external soon and i want to know whats the best way to format it that it will mount on my pc and my mac and allow me to copy more that 4 gigs of stuff on it at a time.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI have bought an external hard drive (Fujitsu) recently and turned into an Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format. I was wondering can it be formatted on the same lines as an iPod. I mean like the iPod that can be detected as an external hard drive by both Windows & Mac. Can't I do the same for my external hard drive?
View 3 Replies View RelatedI used my external hard rive for installing linux(ubuntu) in my other machine. Now when I use the hard rive in mac os or windows, it does not respond very well. When I use windows for transferring files, it shows 1Mbps transfer rate. But it used to have 25 Mbps transfer rate in windows. Now when i use this drive in my mac, it does not show anything. I then used disk utility to reformat it to Mac os x extended journaled, it just gets stuck in Mounting..... like forever. Is there any way to reformat it Fully (i mean "fully" to remove the core files and rebuilding the system files for my external hard drive)) by using 'terminal' or disk utility? Is the hard rive hardware damaged(but the file transfers in windows though slowly? My external hard rive details are:
1.WD external
2.USB 2.0
3.size: 1TB
Info:
MacBook Pro (15-inch Late 2011), OS X Mavericks (10.9.4)
