formatting HD's for mac & pc

[ronedee]

Hi all, I have a G5 tower running 10.7.5 and have been experiencing problems when formatting swappable HD's for both my mac and PC. I've been archiving video files on numerous drives. I "had" been formatting the "new" drives with the the disk utility; single partitions, GUID & ExFat. I was getting artifacts and truncated files when going to the PC. I read on another forum to change to: Master Boot Record instead of GUID. Since I have been doing this, on startup my G5 is telling me these drives are not readable and need to be initialized. This has been a random occurrence. So, its not every drive, every time. I never know which drive will show up as not readable. And once its not readable on the Mac it isn't on the PC at that point either!

My question: What is the reason that I'm now getting this message? Is anything retrievable on these drives once they are supposedly needing to be initialized? Should there be 2 partitions? One for the boot record and another free space? Is there a better, more reliable method of formatting for use on both platforms w/o problems or conflicts? It doesn't seem to be affecting the drives formatted w/ GUID and one partition. But I'm at a standstill on what to do with the several drives I formatted with the MBR option.


This is very frustrating because, I didn't see this problem coming and lot of my data is being lost, and I will have to re-digitize several hours worth of video again!


Thanks for any help you can offer! Ron

 

[chscag]

First, let's get the nomenclature straight for your Mac. You don't have a G5 since a G5 can not run Lion 10.7.5. You likely have an older Intel Mac Pro.

Next, here's my recommendation for formatting your drives so they're compatible to both your Mac and PC. Format the drives with your PC to NTFS and download - install Paragon NTFS on your Mac Pro. Paragon is a driver which allows read and write access to NTFS formatted drives and is a stable driver long used by folks who have both a Mac and PC shared drive. You can buy Paragon NTFS for $19.95 from here.

 

[ronedee]

First, let's get the nomenclature straight for your Mac. You don't have a G5 since a G5 can not run Lion 10.7.5. You likely have an older Intel Mac Pro.

Next, here's my recommendation for formatting your drives so they're compatible to both your Mac and PC. Format the drives with your PC to NTFS and download - install Paragon NTFS on your Mac Pro. Paragon is a driver which allows read and write access to NTFS formatted drives and is a stable driver long used by folks who have both a Mac and PC shared drive. You can buy Paragon NTFS for $19.95 from here.

Yes! Its a MacPro I'm using to format drives. I'm also using a G5 to digitize video, as not to tie up my MP. Sorry for the confusion there.

Great! Thank you!

Do you have any suggestions for the drives that I already have formatted? I'm afraid to fire them up in my Mac! The PC hasn't had a problem until the Mac does. I'm thinking of transferring the files on my PC before I reformat them in NTFS. I'm not sure where the problem is originating.

Thanks for your help! Ron

 

[chscag]

If I remember correctly, as long as you use the NTFS formatter included with Windows, it does not destroy data as it reformats. However, as a precaution it's always a good idea to backup data first.

 

[ronedee]

If I remember correctly, as long as you use the NTFS formatter included with Windows, it does not destroy data as it reformats. However, as a precaution it's always a good idea to backup data first.

Thanks again!