Mac External drive, formatting question.

[cjs]

Hello Mac people,

I have just purchased an external HD to go with my Mac. It has been pre formatted to NTFS and I am told I need it formatted to Fat 32 for use with a Mac. Is this true and if so can I do this on my Macbook? I have gone into Disk Utility and it shows Erase and a Format option but does not give Fat 32 option, just MS Dos System.......what do I do?

I'm sure I could use a PC however a Mac probably does a better job!!

[dictys]

Unless you format as a MS-Dos (Fat 32 or 16) you will only be able to read from the disk not read / write. From memory I think the Mac auto picks FAT32 if you choose MS-Dos under disk utility

[tog]

All my external Firewire drives are Mac OS Extended. Unless you're planing on sharing with a Windows machine, I don't see why you need to format it to MS-DOS. If you really need to share it with Windows, then there's an app (MacDrive or similar I think) that will let Windows read a Mac-formatted drive.

[cjs]

dictys said:

Unless you format as a MS-Dos (Fat 32 or 16) you will only be able to read from the disk not read / write. From memory I think the Mac auto picks FAT32 if you choose MS-Dos under disk utility

Thanks, I thought this may be he case, I just need to get 100% confirmation before I go ahead. I do need to share with a Windows PC so it needs to be fat 32.

I just bought this HD in Singapore, its only a USB2 but at £30 for 100GB it was a bargain.....just need to format it!!

Edited by cjs on Wednesday 28th March 17:09