Formatting

I have a WD MyBook Pro and it is formatted to be FAT32. If I format it to be HFS Extended will it give me more space? It is now at 465 Gb with nothing on it.
Also I thought you couldn't transfer a file bigger than 4Gb with it formatted in FAT32. I transfered a file that was 8.76 Gb just to test it. So whats the deal?

Formatting won't change the amount of space available to you. That 465GB is the physical limit as to how much it can hold. No amount of formatting will increase it.

Not sure how you were able to transfer a file larger than 4GB onto a FAT32 formatted drive. Perhaps it has something to do with the way Mac OS X handles FAT32

FAT32 won't take a file bigger than 4Gb, The most common thing that large are video_ts folders. If this is what you transferred it is not a file, but a folder. You can open it and find many files inside. Typically none of them larger than 1GB. If it was not that, would like to know what type of file it was to check it out.

No, you are correct Bobtomay. It was a file folder but it didnt register in my head. Actually it was a bunch of movies I made that were all around 2Gb's. And if I format it to HFS+, will I still be able to save to it while running bootcamp with Windows XP?

KB3GZW said:

No, you are correct Bobtomay. It was a file folder but it didnt register in my head. Actually it was a bunch of movies I made that were all around 2Gb's. And if I format it to HFS+, will I still be able to save to it while running bootcamp with Windows XP?

Click to expand...

No, Windows by itself can not read nor write to an Apple or Linux formated drive. Has to be FAT32 or NTFS and NTFS Linux and OSX can not write to. You can get a utility for Windows to allow it to read and write to an OSX partition. It's called Mac Drive.


http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/

HFS can give you more space, in a matter of speaking. If I remember correctly (someone help me out here if I'm wrong), the block/cluster on a FAT32 volume is 4k, where on an HFS volume it is 512 bytes. Therefore, you're going to waste less space using HFS than you will with FAT32. How much you waste is going to be dependent of course on how many files your drive contains.

If you've got 100 files, you could conceivably waste only about 358k. If you've got 10,000 files, then you're wasting more like 35mb. Still, this is fairly trivial when you're talking about a 500gig drive.

The biggest advantage of HFS over FAT32 is reliability. FAT32 is notoriously unreliable due to the likelihood of corrupting your FAT table. HFS is a journaled filesystem that can be more easily recovered in case of a crash. Still, this doesn't help you much if you can't write to it from your operating system. MacDrive is a great product, but I think $100 is fairly steep...

I have decided to reformat it to HFS+. But which one do I choose in Disk Utility?

Mac OSX Extended (Journalized)

Alright I did it and it works great. Thanks for the help.

I have to do it this weekend, got me a 500GB drive comin tomorrow from newegg. This'll be my first external drive. Always had plenty of space for more drives in my desktops.

Well the internal drive on the computer that I use most often is only 40GB's and it only has like 2.8GB's. So I had to find something that I could use to get the stuff off of the internal drive and the only thing I wish this My Book Pro had was an Esata plug like the LaCie d2 Quadra but I still like it.

Well, got my OWC quad enclosure and the WD drive.

It's connecting on my MBP, but Disk Utitlity shows it to be a 2TB drive. (I wish) Drive spins up OK, computer recognizes it and asks to initialize, but when I try to erase, partition or anything else, is giving me a read/write error.
Tried connecting it to my XP machine and it's not recognized at all. Acronis also doesn't recognize that it is attached.
Guess in the morning I'll stick the drive in my desktop and see if the issue is with the drive or the enclosure before I make any phone calls.

do you have a program like Techtool pro? I have that and you can run a test of the drives that you have internally and externally and that may help you. the only problem is that it is $100.

bobtomay said:

Well, got my OWC quad enclosure and the WD drive.

It's connecting on my MBP, but Disk Utitlity shows it to be a 2TB drive. (I wish) Drive spins up OK, computer recognizes it and asks to initialize, but when I try to erase, partition or anything else, is giving me a read/write error.
Tried connecting it to my XP machine and it's not recognized at all. Acronis also doesn't recognize that it is attached.
Guess in the morning I'll stick the drive in my desktop and see if the issue is with the drive or the enclosure before I make any phone calls.

Click to expand...

Keep us posted if you will. It will be interesting if it's the drive or the guts in the case.

The drive is DOA.
BIOS doesn't even recognize the drive.
Even tried jumpering it down to 150MB/s just in case my mb was having issues with an SATA II drive. No Go. So, back to newegg I go.

Bummer, 1st time I have ever had a DOA drive. Was really looking forward to playing with it this weekend.

And bty,will probably get Techtool Pro once I get one that's workin' - probably don't need it, but guess that's the geek side of me showin'.
Anyone else have software to compare with that, or is that the one to have for my Mac?

I seem to recall that when I purchased AppleCare they also sent me a disc with tech tool or something similiar .... now where did I put that disc?

.:.EDIT.:.

The Disc is TechTool Deluxe ...

Yea it definately does come with that techtool program. I dont know how that deluxe program compares to the pro version, but I am leaning more and more towards getting applecare when I buy my macbook soon. And also because of the issues that I heard people are having with the MB and MBP.

Yep definitely was the drive, the thing sounded like a jet engine when it would spin up, had an RMA from newegg before the end of the day yesterday, with one e-mail - those guys are too good

meanwhile, Fry's had a sale on the Seagate 750GB SATA II drive today, so I broke down and went and got it - already hooked up, and moving some data off my primary drive and doing some testing. Let ya'll know how it goes later.