Using Seagate drive with MBP

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Just bought a Seagate Blackup Plus Slim 2 TB, on the box it says for use with Mac or PC. I am using a Mac book Pro with 10.6.8. I want to use this drive as a backup place to copy files on the Mac only platform. Not interest in Social Media backup which is what the dashboard seems to be about. Out of the box if I try to drag something to the drive I get circle with a line through it. On the drive it has the dashboard and warrently files. Should this drive work out of the box or do I need to reformat?

Of course no instructions in box and no real help on Seagate website.

Thanks for any help,
 

pigoo3

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hould this drive work out of the box or do I need to reformat?

Probably need to reformat. Use Disk Utility. Format…Mac OS Extended Journaled.

- Nick
 
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If a drive comes with the message "works with Mac or PC" it has a 99% chance it is formatted for NTFS which is a PC (Windows) format. Your Mac will read the files but it can not write to the drive.

From what you have said you do not care to use any of the software on it which will have most likely been written for a pc and you plan to use it only with a mac - correct?

If so what you need to do is open Disk Utility and reformat the drive. Go to Applications -> Utilities -> Disk Utility.

Here is a link from Seagate with screen shots that will walk you through it:

How to format a drive in Mac OS

Lisa
 
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Yes Mac only use is my plan. I bought a 1 TB Seagate last year and it did not need to install a driver. I just did not remember if I formatted it. Seagate just told me to download a driver below is there message:


Hi,

This is a Windows formatted drive, but you can still use it on your MAC.
You will need to download and install the NTFS driver, provided on the link bellow. It will allow your MAC computer to read and write on Windows formatted drives.

NTFS Driver for Mac OS | Seagate

Please let us know if you have any other questions.
NTFS Driver for Mac OS | Seagate
Seagate - Storing the world
 

pigoo3

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You're better off reformatting the drive as I described above.:)

- Nick
 
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Yeah I agree with Nick reformat the drive Mac OS extended journaled.

Lisa
 
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Ignore the Seagate NTFS driver, just format as Nick wisely advised.
 

IWT


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Amen to all of that.

In fact, even when I purchase an EHD "ready for Mac use", I nearly always reformat it as described above; partly to make absolutely sure that it is properly formatted, and secondly, to erase all the addition "benefits" that take up space on the EHD. Unless, of course, you want encryption, online storage and other bits & pieces.

Ian
 

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