External Hard-drive

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Hello everyone

(I'm a new forum user by the way)

I've got a problem. I've been working with Macs for about 10 months now. Since I've got Leopard I'm using TimeMachine to back-up (works-great). On the same external drive I've made maps for pictures and movies.
This weekend I tried to show someone my pictures and movies. This person has a Windows-pc. His computer didn't 'recognize' my harddrive:\ .

The harddrive is a Mac and Windows compatible LaCie.

Can someone please explain the problem to me?
In the most basic terms please;) !
Also, can someone tell me what I should do to make my hard-drive 'recognizable' on a Windows?

Tanx a lot! Jan-Willem

Plz accept my apologies for my bad English
 
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I suspect that your external drive is formatted for your MAC (it needs to be FAT16/32 or NTFS)? If so, Windows cannot read it without 3rd party software.
 
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Your Mac's Specs
Mac Pro 8x3.0ghz 12gb ram 8800GT , MBP 2.16 2GB Ram 17 inch.
So your three options would be:

1) Format your drive to Fat 32 (macs can not write to NTFS) and deal with the limitations.
2) Buy the software for your friend to install on the windows pc so he can read HSF+ (Macs file system)
3) Buy another External HD, format this one as Fat 32, and use that drive to use on both your mac and pc, while keeping your backup drive the newer better operating system with fewer problems. (This is what I would do)

And, Welcome to the forums, I hope you enjoy your stay here.
 
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Tanx for the fast comments!

Is it also possible to re-configure a hard-drive already formatted on my mac (with the tool in Time-Machine) in a way it works like, or with, or as fat-32.

I have another spare hard-drive, I'd like to use that one to interchange files. I've formatted on my Mac already.
 
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Formatting normally destroys the data on that partition.

FAT 32 is the usual (free) option - but it's a bit old and (mostly) inferior to NTFS. It does not always deal with large partitions that well.

There is also MacFuse (free) which can enable Macs to write to NTFS partitions.
 
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So if I install MacFuse, and than put some movies on the hard-drive, I can read the disk on Windows again.
 
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I guess I'm just stupid, but still. I've a already formatted disk (not readable on a Windows pc anymore) how do I reformat this one to a FAT-32 disk.

Jan-Willem
 
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So if I install MacFuse, and than put some movies on the hard-drive, I can read the disk on Windows again.[/QUOTE

No. MacFuse allows your Mac to read & WRITE to a NTFS (i.e. Windows) formatted partition. And an NTFS formatted drive can be read and written by a PC/Windows machine.
 
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Okay but this works if I format my disk on a windows pc, how does it work the other way around?
 
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You format (FAT32 or NTFS) the drive via Disk Management (Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Disk Management.
 

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