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How To Format MAC External Hard Drive For Windows

Discussion in 'Non-Emulation Help' started by tarotmaniac, Apr 20, 2012.

  1. tarotmaniac

    tarotmaniac Well-Known Member

    So I bought my cousin's hard drive and its apparently MAC only and I can't see it when I plug it in. Is there a way to format it using my windows computer?
     
    tarotmaniac, Apr 20, 2012
    #1
  2. Loonylion

    Loonylion Administrator Staff Member

    yes just select the drive in drive management and format it. If that doesnt work, delete the partition and create a new partition
     
    Loonylion, Apr 20, 2012
    #2
  3. Duncan Idaho

    Duncan Idaho Well-Known Member

    @Loonylion in my experience the disc wont be even recognized by windows being usually in mac OS + format, all he needs to do is plug it onto his mac (or a friends) format it to FAT32 completley (and as you said making sure there are no partitions, or create a fAT32 partition) then plug it onto windows and format it to NTFS (that was how i made work on windows my laccie rugged EHDD)
     
    Duncan Idaho, Apr 20, 2012
    #3
  4. Loonylion

    Loonylion Administrator Staff Member

    disk management works at a lower level than the filesystem, since it can manipulate partitions.
     
    Loonylion, Apr 20, 2012
    #4
  5. Duncan Idaho

    Duncan Idaho Well-Known Member

    if there was a partition in there, otherwise AFAIK it wont be even show up in there (i tested that out of a friends suggestion and and i had was the hard drive showing up as an unit, but an unit that couldnt be intereacted with ), ao the easiest way is to format it using a mac computer
     
    Duncan Idaho, Apr 20, 2012
    #5
  6. Loonylion

    Loonylion Administrator Staff Member

    there will be a partition... the disk is unusable as a raw device.
     
    Loonylion, Apr 20, 2012
    #6
  7. tarotmaniac

    tarotmaniac Well-Known Member

    Thanks for the help. At first I just formatted it for my windows laptop then I found out MAC can format it to work for Windows and MAC os so I had that done. Too bad I had delete some of the files when I first formatted it
     
    tarotmaniac, Apr 23, 2012
    #7