External HD - use as is or re-format?

Hi all - have had my MBP for < a week, and have the book below (on my iPad) as my initial guide to learning 'Mountain Lion' - also, purchased a Seagate external HD (1 TB; USB 3) for backup - planning to use Time Machine - now I copied my Docs/Photos/Music from my old Dell laptop and transferred manually to the new MBP - the HD was immediately recognized.

The Seagate HD is formatted NTFS & SMART is not recognized - NOW, Mr. Miser in his book is recommending that I re-format this drive to 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)' - SO, my question is this that important? I'll be using it only for backup purposes and seems to be working fine w/ the new computer - thanks for comments & help - Dave

Reckon you haven't tried writing to that drive from OS X yet?

You can read from, but not write to a NTFS formatted drive without 3rd party software.

Depends on how you are going to use the drive as to whether it needs to be OS X Extended Journaled (HFS+ for short) or NTFS.

Planning on using Time Machine, SuperDuper! or CarbonCopyCloner for backups, then it will need to be formatted as HFS+.

Plan on just copying files to the drive for backup and you want to be able to move the drive back and forth between Windows and your Mac - then spend $20 and get Paragon's NTFS for Mac.

bobtomay said:

Reckon you haven't tried writing to that drive from OS X yet?

You can read from, but not write to a NTFS formatted drive without 3rd party software.

Depends on how you are going to use the drive as to whether it needs to be OS X Extended Journaled (HFS+ for short) or NTFS.

Planning on using Time Machine, SuperDuper! or CarbonCopyCloner for backups, then it will need to be formatted as HFS+......[/URL].

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Hi Bobtomay - thanks for your prompt response - just trying to understand my options w/ this new external HD.

My goal is to simply use this HD w/ Time Machine on my MBP - I will have no need to interact w/ a Windows computer, plus I have this 'old' data backed up to a USB flash drive.

SO from your response, I need to reformat the drive and then it should work fine w/ my new laptop using Time Machine - correct? Dave

That's correct. Time Machine needs the drive to be formatted as hfs+ extended journaled. Here's a How To just in case you haven't done it before. If you choose to zero the drive in step 6 it can take quite some time.

Slydude said:

That's correct. Time Machine needs the drive to be formatted as hfs+ extended journaled. Here's a How To just in case you haven't done it before. If you choose to zero the drive in step 6 it can take quite some time.

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Thanks Guys - I re-formatted the HD as suggested above, and am now running Time Machine to backup my MBP - I was never asked about 'Step 6' and hope that this is not that important - bottom line, just want to backup my initial efforts w/ this new computer - again, thanks for your responses - assume that I'm OK @ the moment - Dave

You would only see the option to zero out data if you clicked on the Security Options button on that screen. That step is not a "must do". In the process of writing zeros to the drive Disk Utility tries to identify any bad areas of the drive so they will not be used.

Slydude said:

You would only see the option to zero out data if you clicked on the Security Options button on that screen. That step is not a "must do". In the process of writing zeros to the drive Disk Utility tries to identify any bad areas of the drive so they will not be used.

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Thanks Slydude - believe that I'll be fine w/ the drive - appreciate the help! Dave