Is it possiable to reformat External HD?

Without losing everything. I have a Western Digital HD that is in Fat32 and I need to make it in NFTS. how do I do this without losing everything?

Copy the data somewhere else and move it back. Formating doesn't erase the data per se, but it makes it does make the drive seem blank. You can get the data back, but it is not a fun and/or easy process.

You do realize that Mac's don't write to NTFS right?

I just figured that out. I only have one file that i need to transfer thats over 4 gigs so I'm just going to move it to my Desktop and burn it on a dual layer DVD. I'm going to make this HD thats in Fat32 my music one then get me a new one for my big movies and other stuff and format it in Mac Journal or something since I wont need to be transfering it to a PC or anything.

That's the go EWC. Drag to desktop and burn, go to Disk Utility, select external HDD and reformat, using options if you wish to zero the drive, and Mac OS Extended (Journalled).

lifeafter2am said:

Copy the data somewhere else and move it back. Formating doesn't erase the data per se, but it makes it does make the drive seem blank. You can get the data back, but it is not a fun and/or easy process.

You do realize that Mac's don't write to NTFS right?

Click to expand...

I just copied the data off my NTFS formatted external drive (primarily was for my PC). Is there a way to reformat the drive so I can write to it with OSX (10.4)?

If all of the data is backed up somewhere else, then just fire up Disk Utility and format the drive to either FAT32 or HFS+

Cool...thanks. Reformat complete. I can write to it now. I didn't see either of those two options that you mentioned. A friend messaged me back and said that DOS would work (want to write using the PC too). That appears to be the case (just dragged and dropped a few files in).

Ive just reformated my external hd but wish to use it on my pc too, Ive been told to use partition magic but I cant access my hd from my pc, why is that?

I didn't need to partition it. I just had to format it for DOS so both systems could recognize it. I can now unplug it and open it from both Mac/PC without any issues.

I'm no expert by any stretch of the imagination...but you may have the drive formatted so that only Mac's can access it.