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    Formatting External HD

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by knp, Aug 17, 2007.

  1. knp

    knp Notebook Evangelist

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    My Seagate FreeAgent is currently formatted in NTFS, allowing only Mac OS X to read the files, rendering transfers useless. I noticed under the Disk Utility, there is an option to format drives including my MBP's HD and my 2 other external HD connected. Is it possible to reformat only a portion of my FreeAgent, which is currently all NTFS, to FAT32? Or do I have to reformat the entire drive into FAT32?
     
  2. Greg

    Greg Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    You would have to repartition the drive to have part of the external NTFS and part FAT32. That FreeAgent drive probably only has one partition on it (correct me if I'm wrong) so the format option is an all or nothing deal.
     
  3. stealthsniper96

    stealthsniper96 What Was I Thinkin'?

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    yes you should be able to partition it.
     
  4. weeeee

    weeeee Notebook Consultant

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    I also have this problem but I deleted everything off my external hard drive when I was reformatting my computer. Now the external hard drive isn't visible when I go to My Computer. Any suggestions on fixing this?
     
  5. knp

    knp Notebook Evangelist

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    So it is possible to reformat only a portion of the HD without having to repartition/reformat the entire HD, thus causing me to lose all data that is already on there? I have about 100GB worth of data, so I don't want to have to reformat the entire HD.