I'm clueless - Formatting an External HDD/SuperDuper

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Hi guys,

completely baffled as to what to do here:

I have about 80gb of data taken from my windows laptop on my MS-DOS FAT32 External Hard Drive.

I have downloaded the SuperDuper program and trying to backup everything from my Mac Machine.

When I choose my external HDD to backup to I get this error:

FREECOM HDD is not a Macintosh-formatted disk.

FREECOM HDD is formatted as MS-DOS FAT32, which cannot properly host HFS+ files along with all their attributes, resources and ownership.

To use FREECOM HDD with SuperDuper!, use Disk Utility to erase it, selecting "Mac OS Extended" or "Mac OS Extended (journaled)" as the format.

- I then have the option to 'Chose another Volume' or 'Launch Disk Utility'

The data I have on the drive at the minute is from my Windows laptop but don't have a laptop anymore, just the iMac.

Is it possible to format this drive to what is required by SuperDuper but to leave all the data on the HDD as it is?

If this is possible to, how? I am completely clueless to the External HDD/Partitions/Volumes side of things.

I know I can go into the Disk Utility and choose to partition the HDD to 2 seperate partitions, but if I do this will I lose all the data on the HDD at present? Could I copy all of my data onto my iMac (Data originally from a Windows machine) and then put it back onto the relevant partition?

Any (easy as possible!) help appreciated.

Liam
 
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I know I can go into the Disk Utility and choose to partition the HDD to 2 seperate partitions, but if I do this will I lose all the data on the HDD at present? Could I copy all of my data onto my iMac (Data originally from a Windows machine) and then put it back onto the relevant partition?

Yep. Reformatting will destroy all the data on the disk. If you back it up to a different location first (i.e. your internal harddrive), you can reformat the disk to HFS+ and then copy the data back on there.
 
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Since MacOS is installed on an HFS partioned drive, SuperDuper can only clone it to an HFS partionioned drive. So, you must backup the existing data on the hard drive and reformat it to HFS so you can clone your mac.
 
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All sorted and working fine - cheers gents =)
 

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