Formatting drives for mac and pc

jamief · Post by **jamief** » Thu Nov 06, 2008 9:44 pm

Hello all,
looking for some advice on how to format a portable drive so that it can be read by mac and pc alike.
Trying to avoid that pc thing where you can only shift small amount of data ie under 10 gig ( CANT REMEMBER THE EAXCT LIMIT ) that is incurred by some pc formatting as the drive is 320 g and i want to copy 70 gigs onto it.

many thanks

J

Mechanised · Post by **Mechanised** » Thu Nov 06, 2008 9:58 pm

I had the same problem now let me get this strieght if your going to choose another external drive to carry around I recommend a western digital one I choose maxator and it didn't work because it wanted me to format it for each system. So with a western digital (320G) I just moved from pc to mac no problem if that was your question..

jamief · Post by **jamief** » Fri Nov 07, 2008 11:25 am

Yes ido need to hot swap between mac and pc but i also need to shift large amounts of data ie 70 gig at a time.

thanks

Mechanised wrote:I had the same problem now let me get this strieght if your going to choose another external drive to carry around I recommend a western digital one I choose maxator and it didn't work because it wanted me to format it for each system. So with a western digital (320G) I just moved from pc to mac no problem if that was your question..

stonee · Post by **stonee** » Fri Nov 07, 2008 12:25 pm

get your hard drive, and get a mac.

go to utilities, then disk utility. then go to erase, then choose ms-dos from the file system.

Mike Goodwin · Post by **Mike Goodwin** » Fri Nov 07, 2008 12:31 pm

Format it to the FAT32 file system. It will work on both operating systems.
On your PC you can simply right click on the drive and select format. You will see FAT32 as an option.

All the best.

Gnuus · Post by **Gnuus** » Fri Nov 07, 2008 12:59 pm

The FAT32 has a 4 Gb limit

The best thing is to format it MacOS extended journaled and use a program called MacDrive http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/. Then you can access files on the Mac disk just like you would with a Windows formatted disk.

greetz

craw · Post by **craw** » Fri Nov 07, 2008 2:08 pm

Gnuus wrote:The FAT32 has a 4 Gb limit

The best thing is to format it MacOS extended journaled and use a program called MacDrive http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/. Then you can access files on the Mac disk just like you would with a Windows formatted disk.

greetz

What he said ... FAT 32 is cool n all compatibility wise, but 4 GB limit is a pain in ther arse depending on what you are doing. (rendering big video projects, etc.). The first time I came up against this wall I was like, WTF? I wanted to transfer a 6GB file from my mac to my PC ... Mac wont write to NTFS, windows wont read Mac-journaled, FAT32 won't handle 4GB+ files, macbook of mines has no dual-layer DVD burner .... in this day in age .... WTF? I done it over ethernet in the end ... but macdrive is very cool.

Depends on whether you will be collabotrating with other PC users and want to share files, and they don't have macdrive, then you are kinda fucked if you are mac-journaled formatted.

hacktheplanet · Post by **hacktheplanet** » Fri Nov 07, 2008 10:43 pm

As the others have said, if you have files over 4gb, then do the MacDrive thing. Otherwise, just use FAT32. Having to use MacDrive if you don't really need it is kind of a pain in the ass.
I use a FAT32 formatted external on a daily basis and it's just fine. Of course, I don't have any files over 4gb.

jonny72 · Post by **jonny72** » Fri Nov 07, 2008 10:51 pm

Go with FAT32, you won't have any problems (other then the 4Gb file size limit).

If the drive is over 32Gb in size (which I'm guessing it is) then you won't be able to format it on Windows - this was a design decision by Microsoft rather than a technical limit. So just format it on the Mac - Windows will still read it fine.

Formatting drives for mac and pc

Formatting drives for mac and pc

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