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Thread ID: 67502 2006-03-30 00:06:00 external hard drive help Downie (10075) Press F1
Post ID Timestamp Content User
441879 2006-03-30 00:06:00 ok, here's the story

got an external hard drive for my mac at work, set it all up fine and dandy. then come home to my windows xp machine and plug in hdd into the firewire card. windows detects drive as an unpartitioned drive. would partitioning it delete all the highly valuble files i have on it?
Downie (10075)
441880 2006-03-30 00:10:00 Yes! What format did you make the partition when you set it up on your MAC? CYaBro (73)
441881 2006-03-30 00:13:00 i can't remember. i'm not a huge mac user so i don't know what formats it would have to even start thinking about it. is there anyway at all i could use the drive with my home pc? Downie (10075)
441882 2006-03-30 01:55:00 I'm not a Mac person, so I can only guess. It sounds like you can mount an NTFS (Windows) partition in OS X:

developer.apple.com
kingdragonfly (309)
441883 2006-03-30 01:55:00 Format it on the PC. Use FAT32. The Mac will certainly handle a PC format much better than a PC will handle Mac formats. ;) NTFS is probably still a bit iffy for tranfers in both directions. Linux and Mac OS X will read NTFS disks, but since MS won't release documentation there are still suggestions that writing is best avoided. It can be done, but there are no guarantees.

The Disk Manager should find it, and do the format.
Graham L (2)
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