External hard drive formatted fat32

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I have a WD 240gb hard drive which I have formatted on my mac as fat32 in order to use with PCs at work. The problem I am having is that when I delete a file from the hard drive when using the mac, the available space on the hard drive doesn't increase?
Any help appreciated.
Peter
 

Raz0rEdge

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You are presumably deleting the file from the external HD by moving it to the trash (and even if you're not), so the files are in the trash waiting to be rescued if you need them. So WITH the external HD plugged in, empty the trash and the space will be available..

Regards
 
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I wouldn't recommend using FAT32 as you will not be able to add a file that is 4GB or higher. I have a WD 160GB hard drive and I formatted it as NTFS and I can read it on both Windows and Macintosh just fine.

And as Raz0r said, when you delete anything, check the Trash and remove it from there also.
 
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chas_m

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Tarek fails to mention, however, that NTFS is read-only by default on the Mac. This may or may not be a huge issue.

There are rather geeky ways around it, but for "normal" people I usually suggest just sticking with FAT32 if the drive must be used with both PC and Mac and avoiding using it with any files larger than 4GB (which apart from video is generally pretty easy to do).

I'm all about the lazy, easy way to do stuff. :)
 

chscag

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We probably should also mention to the folks who are using Snow Leopard that it can read and write to NTFS although it's not turned on by default. Easy enough to do if you know Terminal or just download the free ntfsMounter.app.
 
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We probably should also mention to the folks who are using Snow Leopard that it can read and write to NTFS although it's not turned on by default. Easy enough to do if you know Terminal or just download the free ntfsMounter.app.

Thanks chscag, this will save me having to mess about reformatting and copying between drives.
 
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Thanks for the input, cash_m, I forgot to mention that. In order to be able to read & write, install NTFS-3G at Tuxera
 

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