External HD no problem with OSX10.3 but not with PC

Hi All,

Well I am having problem with my recently bougth external HD......When I bought this HD, this device is available for use in Mac & Pc. Its said that this external HD need to reformat it if to be use by PC, which i did not do so, coz for mac use it do not require this step.

Evrything goes well when i plug into my mac straight away i partitial into 2 parts.(no formatting require) I stored files, songs etc.. inside and access it from my imac easily hmmm..but sometimes its seem not working quite well coz it will hang for some time and I had to unplug it manually(force it) if not I cant use my imac at all!!!

Worst things is....when I plug into a PC...its totally cant read this device at all...I cant access my pre-stored file from this external HD...ANY ONE CAN HELP ME~~~ is my external HD having serious problem? should I format it??? and how to format ?

Mac file system is HFS+ and windows can not use tis file format. You need to format the hard drive in FAT32 in order to use it with both systems.

To format it, you need to plug it in to your Windows machine, then if it's XP go to Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management and then use the Disk Management section to partition and format your drive. You will lose everything on it, but both PC and Mac will then be able to read it.

Before you do this you should use Disk Utility on the Mac just to check what format it's in - in case it's some other issue.

^-^ Thanks for the reply PowerBookG4 & Thermidor!

I try it this week end.

HELP~~ what to do now......

Story began when i bought this external Samsung 2.5" external HD:-
HM080HC
SpinPoint M80 Series
With PMR technology

Firstly, I not a experience Mac user. So when I bought this HD I plug it in go to the disk utility and since readable by my Mac i just partition it into 2 parts, everythings goes well, I can read my data from this external HD.

Problems comes, when i plug it into windows XP, it cannot detect the drive at all, I had removed all the external HD data and Erased the 2 partions back to one. I thought of reformat it in windows XP so I plug it in, but it still cant read by window!!!! No drive name detect I can do any formatting or partion in windows Xp at all! What wrong!

Please someone help me.....neye:

thermidor said:

To format it, you need to plug it in to your Windows machine

Click to expand...

not necessary!

disk utility in OS X will also format FAT16 or FAT32 (preferable) and partition if necessary.

try to remove anything critical to your mac's hard drive first, then format.

Hi eric, Sorry to ask, where can i see to format in FAT16 or FAT32?

In the disk utitilty, If i see under the ERASE button it have 4 types of Volume Format to choose, they are:-
1) Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
2) Mac OS Extended
3) MS-Dos File System
4) Unix File System

What are these?? where is the format FAT16 or FAT32

If I see under the Partition button it has:-
1) Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
2) Mac OS Extended
3) Unix file System
4) Free space

by the way, its has a 'tick' box which specifty that to install Mac OS9 Disk Drivers (if this option is not selected, this device cannot be used by a computer running Mac OS9. This option does not affect Classic.

So what does this for? Should I tick?

Look for MSDOS File system. That is FAT.

sorry, i'm not on my mac now, but i believe under format, choose ms-dos, then you should have the options for type of file system and what size partitions, if any, you want.

Hi all

Basically I think i get it somehow. In Window XP I had 20GB under the primary partition in FAT32 format wherelse the balance I partition it under the extented partition which only allow me to select in NTFS format.

Ok I plug in to mac i can read both partitioned drive but can only copy file to the FAT32 format partition. The NTFS format partition I can copy anythings to it....what wrong?

Or should I partition it by not selecting to format the drive in windows for the primary partition. Wherelse the extented partition which can only allow me to choose the format in NTFS, it show a partitioned drive with "Freespace"...so if I select the next step -> New logical drive it will format it to NTFS file.

Help needed

the mac can not read/write/delete NTFS only read.

if you have a partition on this drive that's NTFS you will want to format that to FAT32

if you have a FAT partition, you can leave it. it will be able to be read/write/delete by both windows and OS X.

it seems odd to me though that you said this drive cannot be read on windows. windows should be able to have full access to FAT and NTFS partitions. perhaps there's a problem with the disk that can only be fixed by a complete reformat/repartition of the drive.
if you don't mind losing the data on the drive, i might suggest this, formatted FAT32. and then see if windows can see the drive.

G'day JaneChua,

JaneChua said:

Hi eric, Sorry to ask, where can i see to format in FAT16 or FAT32?

In the disk utitilty, If i see under the ERASE button it have 4 types of Volume Format to choose, they are:-

3) MS-Dos File System

Click to expand...

When you use Disc Utility to format your ext HD, select option 3. MS-DOS.

by the way, its has a 'tick' box which specifty that to install Mac OS9 Disk Drivers (if this option is not selected, this device cannot be used by a computer running Mac OS9. This option does not affect Classic.

So what does this for? Should I tick?

Click to expand...

Regarding the tick box underneath:

If you are running only OS9 on your Mac then you would want to tick this box. If you're running OS X, then leave this blank.