Reformatting a Mac drive for PC
 

I have an external 2.5" USB hard drive formatted on a Mac.

What options do I have to reformat this drive for PC/NTFS other than formatting it on a Mac as FAT32 and then formatting it on a PC as NTFS?

Thanks,

I take it you want to transfer some files on it, otherwise the PC can just partition & format the drive regardless.

FAT32 is the only out of the box format that you farmat a disk with on a Mac and read it on Windows.

However on Windows you can use MacDrive to use and format Mac disks (like Mac OS Extended HFS+) or any other Mac formatted media (CD's, zip's, you name it).

You can do the reverse on Macs with Paragon NTFS, although I think it is not as good as MacDrive is on the PC.

Now it's all about choice!

George/

P.S. Whoohoo, post #200!

No, I don't need to transfer anything.

And no again, Windows does not "see" the drive, so I can't do a thing with it on the PC.

The disk will not mount on Windows, but the hardware should be detected. Windows should "ding" when you connect it to the USB port and it should be listed in the "Safely Remove Hardware" system tray icon (next to the time).

After connecting it and checking it gets recognized, right-click on "My Computer", select "Manage". Click on "Disk Managemen". The disk should be listed there.

Remove any existing partitions/create a new partition by right-clicking on the disk representation and after creating the partition format it NTFS.

That should do it.

George/

Mr. Gates' hardware classes were sooo boring, I must've missed this one...

OK, it shows up in the device manager under disks, right clicked, but I see no option to manage partitions or to reformat...

Start menu/Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Disk Management (the same for XP and Vista)

You'll see a list of all the storage devices - mainly disk drives but also smart card readers, flash drives etc.

One of them will show up as having no partition etc. Create a new partition and then quick format to NTFS.

Thanks John, it's all done now.