Formatting Extenal HDD on Mac

Hi,

the notebook i will be using this is: 17" SR MBP (Tiger, 10.4.11)
the hard drive is: 500GB Free Agent Pro (NTFS) (over USB)

how do i reformat this harddrive? it is currently formatted in NTFS, i think the Partition Scheme is; Master Boot Record (MBR)...

what is the best partition scheme for my mac, should i format it to GUID or leave it in MBR?
what do you guys use as the partition scheme on your external HDD?

when erasing the volume in disk utility to format it as HFS+, using the "Erase" tab; would it also automatically rewrite my Partition to GUID? if not, is using the partition tab the only way to do it?

is it better to leave the volume scheme: "current" or "1 partition" or doesnt matter? (i want for it to be one single volume only)

what is the best way to reformat an external HDD? using the "Partition" or "Erase" tab?

thanks

 

Erase if you want to reformat the entire HD, partition if you want to split it into separate partitions. Erasing into HFS+ will remove everything on the HD, including the MBR etc.

 

I also have some difficulty with my external HDD Western Digital My Passport, it works flawlessly in Mac OS X and backs up my mac by TM. However, I am not able to access it by windows in bootcamp even though the windows recognize the USB as being external drive. Any suggestion is greatly appreciated. I want to know if the problem is the format of the hard drive as I don't really know what format it is in right now.

 

What you're seeing is because Windows cannot read nor write to a HFS+ format drive, which is what TM has done to your WD.

OSX can read both NTFS and HFS+, but cannot write to NTFS.

If you format the drive in FAT32, I believe that both OSX and Windows can read/write but you run up against the file size limitation (4GB) inherent to FAT32.

There are third party utilities around here (I forget them at the moment) which can allow XP/Vista to read HFS - I think - my memory could be faulty on this one.

 

Get MacDrive ( http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/)

 

thanks budding.

so, erasing the volume using the "Erase" tab also erases and replace the partition scheme automatically to GUID? can anyone confirm? or is partitioning tab is the only way to go.

btw, is it necessary or a good idea to change the volume scheme to GUID?

 

using the Erase tab can only actually erase a partition itself. I recommend creating a new single partition using the GUID option, just in case you ever need it to be bootable for any reason.

then you should be good to go.

you can just use the partition tab, the erase tab is only used to reformat partitions, where the partition tab is used to well, repartition the drive itself.

unless you already have a reason to, i don't recommend making multiple partitions on the HDD unless you are looking to use part of it as a secondary clean install of OSX, or something like that.

if you can and have the time to do so, it isn't a bad idea to make a perfect install of OSX with all the applications you need as a master install image, just incase you ever need to reformat your system, you can avoid having to reinstall a lot of apps and readjusting a lot of preferences.

 

Thanks, I already got macdrive....how stupid of me....completely forgotten that it would work with a mac format external HDD too.....will try it tonight.

 

hmmm... ic... the partition tab is the only way to go.. would be more convinient if we can do it from the erase tab.

is it necessary or a good idea to change the volume scheme to GUID?

and if i decide to plug the drive back to my windows xp pc. will i be able to reformat the drive back to NTFS w/ MBR (Master Boot Record)? just use reformat under My Computer -> properties... or disk management?

 

I have already partitioned by external hard drive into two parts:
1) Time machine backup (so when it gets full it will delete itself)
2) Data (in FAT32 format so I can use it with windows and OS X and not worrying that the time machine backup will utilize all the space I would need)

This is working well so far, any suggestions?