08-10-2010, 06:33 PM

Okay, so I went into Disk Utility, clicked on the USB drive I had plugged in, and then selected the Erase tab. I'm confused on formats.

What's the difference between:

Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)
Mac OS X Extended
Mac OS X Extended (Case Sensitive, Journaled)
Mac OS X Extended (Case Sensitive)


Which one is appropriate for a thumb drive? And if I ever plug the USB drive into a Windows computer, will Windows be able to read a Mac OS X Extended format? A little confused here.

08-10-2010, 07:54 PM

Use "MS-DOS" for a thumb drive. For a hard disk, you'll want Mac OS X Extended (Journaled). Honestly not even sure why they'd offer the options of the other formats.

08-10-2010, 07:56 PM

And is it true that to format the USB drive in Fat32 and to work on both OSX and Windows, it needs to be formatted on a WINDOWS machine ??

08-10-2010, 07:59 PM

Originally Posted by TattooedMac

And is it true that to format the USB drive in Fat32 and to work on both OSX and Windows, it needs to be formatted on a WINDOWS machine ??

Nope, not a bit. The "MS-DOS" option in Disk Utility formats it as FAT32. I've been doing it for ages, never had a compatibility issue.

08-10-2010, 08:07 PM

Originally Posted by cwa107

Nope, not a bit. The "MS-DOS" option in Disk Utility formats it as FAT32. I've been doing it for ages, never had a compatibility issue.

Mmmmmm interesting as i have had issues. Might look at a pricier USB drive instead of the cheapie's then, for better compatibility ....

08-10-2010, 09:15 PM

So what about Security? There are options to choose from.

Don't Erase Data
Write Zeros
7-Pass Zero (US DOD compliant)
35 Pass Zero (35x overwrite)

Would it affect anything?

08-10-2010, 09:20 PM

Originally Posted by Chris H.

So what about Security? There are options to choose from.

Don't Erase Data
Write Zeros
7-Pass Zero (US DOD compliant)
35 Pass Zero (35x overwrite)

Would it affect anything?

Depends on how sensitive the data was that had been stored on it and how you use your drive.

If you're selling it on eBay, do the 7-pass. If you're traipsing across the world with it, but will be using it routinely, a regular "write zeros". And if it's not going to leave your house, just do a plain old format.

I can't imagine why anyone would want to do a 35 pass zero. It's more likely that the drive would mechanically fail long before someone could possibly recover data from something overwritten in 7 passes.

08-10-2010, 09:36 PM

Originally Posted by TattooedMac

Mmmmmm interesting as i have had issues. Might look at a pricier USB drive instead of the cheapie's then, for better compatibility ....

The only issue you'll run into using Disk Utility to format a USB or any external drive to FAT-32 is if you do not use the correct formatting procedure. Disk Utility will default to formatting FAT-32 (MS DOS) as GUID. That's not good because it creates a small 200 MB EFI partition on the drive in the process. That will usually cause a Windows machine to only "see" that first small EFI partition and not the rest of the drive. I have had this happen to me several times.

When formatting any drive to FAT-32 using Disk Utility, always select the MBR choice. No 200 MB EFI partition will be created then.

Regards.

08-10-2010, 09:38 PM

Originally Posted by chscag

The only issue you'll run into using Disk Utility to format a USB or any external drive to FAT-32 is if you do not use the correct formatting procedure. Disk Utility will default to formatting FAT-32 (MS DOS) as GUID. That's not good because it creates a small 200 MB EFI partition on the drive in the process. That will usually cause a Windows machine to only "see" that first small EFI partition and not the rest of the drive. I have had this happen to me several times.

When formatting any drive to FAT-32 using Disk Utility, always select the MBR choice. No 200 MB EFI partition will be created then.

Regards.

Interesting. That has not been my experience to-date with dozens of different drives.

08-10-2010, 09:44 PM

Originally Posted by chscag

The only issue you'll run into using Disk Utility to format a USB or any external drive to FAT-32 is if you do not use the correct formatting procedure. Disk Utility will default to formatting FAT-32 (MS DOS) as GUID. That's not good because it creates a small 200 MB EFI partition on the drive in the process. That will usually cause a Windows machine to only "see" that first small EFI partition and not the rest of the drive. I have had this happen to me several times.

When formatting any drive to FAT-32 using Disk Utility, always select the MBR choice. No 200 MB EFI partition will be created then.

Regards.

Nice one chscag i think you hit the nail on the head for me. This has been my minor problem with the formatting process Thanks

08-10-2010, 09:52 PM

Originally Posted by cwa107

Interesting. That has not been my experience to-date with dozens of different drives.

I erased and formatted an external USB FireLite (SmartDisk) drive that I was using for my Win 7 backups. Without thinking, I used Disk Utility which resulted in creating that 200 MB EFI partition in addition to the remainder of the free space. I tried everything including Partition Magic to remove the partition and nothing worked. Even Disk Manager from Win 7 refused to remove it.

I finally wound up doing some digging on Google and found a way to remove all partitions from the drive using a command line routine from Win 7. I have it bookmarked if you ever need it.

Regards.

08-11-2010, 02:50 AM

Originally Posted by chscag

I erased and formatted an external USB FireLite (SmartDisk) drive that I was using for my Win 7 backups. Without thinking, I used Disk Utility which resulted in creating that 200 MB EFI partition in addition to the remainder of the free space. I tried everything including Partition Magic to remove the partition and nothing worked. Even Disk Manager from Win 7 refused to remove it.

I finally wound up doing some digging on Google and found a way to remove all partitions from the drive using a command line routine from Win 7. I have it bookmarked if you ever need it.

Regards.

Hi there I have exactly the same trouble as you have and now my USB drive does not work with Windowns.
Would you share the link please and give some more details how you managed to get rid of the problem?

Thanks.

08-11-2010, 03:20 PM

Originally Posted by Ardanx

Hi there I have exactly the same trouble as you have and now my USB drive does not work with Windowns.
Would you share the link please and give some more details how you managed to get rid of the problem? Thanks.

Here it is: LINK

NOTE: You must use a CMD prompt from within Windows in order for the procedure to work. Make sure you first attach the drive and it can be seen by the Windows Disk Manager.

When issuing the command make sure you address the correct drive! Remove any other drive attached to the machine first! You can not do any harm to your internal drive since it has no effect on a working drive.

Also, important! Make sure the drive does not contain data you wish to keep, since everything will be wiped out in the process.

Regards.