External Hard Drive

I have a 200GB external hard drive and have 100GB formatted for OS X and the other half is just free space. When I boot into Windows it recognizes the drive but does not see the 100GB of free space and it doesnt show up under My Computer. How can I get Windows to see the drive?

P.S. I have it connected via FireWire, if that matters at all.

I shall try to guide you through this by memory, so a few steps may be missing.

Right click on my computer

choose "manage"

Go to "disk management"

There you should find all connected drives. One of them should say something like "un-portioned space" or something like that.

You will have to format the space, probably with a right-click option, and than assign it a drive letter.

Good luck!

I tried doing that and it didnt work.

Where was the hangup exactily?

Could you perhaps post a screenshot of what your disk management screen looks like?

How is the 100gb partition formatted?

Windows won't read HFS+.

Why don't you try removing all partitions under Windows (make sure there's no important data you don't want to lose). Create a new 100GB NTFS.
Go back to OS X and create the rest for your OS X.

Where was the hangup exactily?

Could you perhaps post a screenshot of what your disk management screen looks like?

I am not sure how to take a screenshot in Windows since the Apple USB keyboard doesnt have a prntscrn button.


How is the 100gb partition formatted?

Windows won't read HFS+.

I have one of the 100GB partitions formatted in HFS+ for OS X and the other one is just free space, I did this with Disk Utility in OS X.


Why don't you try removing all partitions under Windows (make sure there's no important data you don't want to lose). Create a new 100GB NTFS.
Go back to OS X and create the rest for your OS X.

Do you mean to get rid of my Windows partition on the main hard drive? Im sorry but Im not sure what you mean exactly?

Under XP, computer management, disk management.
Remove all the partitions pertaining to your external drive (MAKE SURE YOU ARE SELECTING THE CORRECT ONE, and not the internal one!!!)

Then create a new partition and format it as NTFS.

Then go back into OS X and create the rest.

I think that superdude may have the right idea. Windows may not like to play with OS X, but OS X usally has no trouble playing with Windows.

I figured it all out. I partitioned it for MS DOS under OS X and then split it up to half MS DOS and half OS X. Thanks for all the help everyone.

Glad you got it figured out. I'm especially glad you didn't have to use Windows to do it...

As the announcement posted at the top of EVERY FORUM on this site states, all Windows questions go in the Windows forum.

Moving there.