Need to format external to work with PC and Macbook

I have an external USB harddrive that's formatted in a way that my Macbook can't seem to read it. Says it NTFS. I need to format it to something that both my Windows XP PC and my OSX 10.5 Macbook can read and write to. How would I do this?

You need to format the drive as FAT32. FAT32 is both readable and writeable from both operating systems.

Are there any drawbacks to formatting it to FAT32? I do a lot of video editting...

How do I go about doing that?


EDIT: Actually, can I run it on HFS+ for the Mac and run MacDrive on the PC? That seems to be the best method. However, I can't find a way to format the drive to HFS+ in Windows...

mr_goodbomb said:

Are there any drawbacks to formatting it to FAT32? I do a lot of video editting...

How do I go about doing that?


EDIT: Actually, can I run it on HFS+ for the Mac and run MacDrive on the PC? That seems to be the best method. However, I can't find a way to format the drive to HFS+ in Wi ndows...

Click to expand...

You're better offormatting in NTFS and then using something like NTFS for mac or MacFUSE to access the drive. With FAT32 you have a 4gig per file limit.

HD ntfs and TC

Hi Santino,

I have similar problem, if I went with your solution, would this solve the following problem:Hi, I hope your solutions may help with my problem. I have a time capsule and works brill with my mac's but I also have PC's with NTFS files system, I have an external HD NTFS that is not recognized when plugged into TC, I can see it but no options to access it on a Mac, not even for reading and on the PC, I can only see TC.

Would having two routers, solve this problem, so that I could attach the USB external HD to the router that is not TC?

Any other way of doing this? I think the problem I have that anything attaching to TC that is NTFS will not work. I also have an external HD Minimax that has USB in the back of it, could I maybe plug this to TC and format it into HFS (Mac system files) and then plug external HD NTFS to it?

I don't want to give up on TC as it is perfect for everything else but cannot for work reason leave my PC's out of the loop.

Thank you