I'm trying to partition an external hard drive so my old mac will recognize it. Thing is... I want to use it on both my mac and HP running windows XP. There is nothing on a mac that will partition the drive and have it compatible with windows, and I can't find anything for the latter. Any helpful advice out there?
2006-08-20 07:55:30 · 3 answers · asked by Krazy Karl 2 in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Other - Hardware
Also, I don't want to buy Partitioning Magic or something like that.
2006-08-20 07:58:24 · update #1
Check this link
2006-08-20 08:17:29 · answer #1 · answered by mrresearchman 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Use Disk Utility on the Mac, located in Applications > Utilities. Format using "MS-DOS", and Disk Utility will automatically format the hard drive in the FAT-32 file system, which is compatable with both operating systems. The only annoying thing is that on the PC, you will see extra files, noted by a . prefix and a small size. This is caused by the HFS file system.
2006-08-20 19:56:49 · answer #2 · answered by nathan75932 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
i think macs can read FAT so if the external hard drive is empty just right click it in windows and select format. failing that go into device manager in windows then disk management.
2006-08-20 15:01:24 · answer #3 · answered by underseadiver 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋