HFS+ External HD

[hirschab]

I just got a 500gb external hd, and it is currently formatted as FAT32, but I want to format it as HFS+ without partitioning it. How do I do that?
Also I'm going to be dual booting vista/leopard once they are released, is there any way to get vista to recognize an HFS+ drive?

 

[aliquis-]

I just got a 500gb external hd, and it is currently formatted as FAT32, but I want to format it as HFS+ without partitioning it. How do I do that?
Also I'm going to be dual booting vista/leopard once they are released, is there any way to get vista to recognize an HFS+ drive?

If it's new and doesn't have any files why don't you wanna partition it?

There is macdrive or something like that for Windows to handle HFS+.

You can repartition your disk with disk utility in the utilities directory under applications.

 

[galstaph]

Windows doesn't like HFS. There are programs out there that will let your mac talk/write to ntfs (macs will read but not write to ntfs). Otherwise macs are happy to read/write to fat32

 

[hirschab]

yeah but isn't there a size restriction of 4gb on FAT32 drives when using macs. Anyway, is HFS+ is faster I want to use that. And I don't want to partition it... because why would I want to partition it?

 

[iBookG4user]

You can use Disk Utility to format the drive to HFS+, but windows will not be able to read it.

 

[cardsdoc]

My external drive is formatted in HFS+ and I use Macdrive on my Windows PC. It works seamlessly. I also didn't want the limitations of FAT32 and it's my impression that the NTFS implementation for OS X (MacFuse) does not perform as well.

 

[hirschab]

I wrote some files to my disk using XP and now in OS X it isn't recognized, but when I go to disk utility it is recognized, I just cant access it from the finder. Does anyone know why this is?

 

[hirschab]

OK, NOW when I go into disk utility, and I click on the drives mount point, then the drive appears in finders sidebar. It's formatted as windows_fat32 but should that make a difference?

 

[filmgirl]

OK, NOW when I go into disk utility, and I click on the drives mount point, then the drive appears in finders sidebar. It's formatted as windows_fat32 but should that make a difference?

Did you mount the drive? I mean, I would assume it would automount, but you never know.

What I did, FWIW, was format my external in HFS and then I just have MacDrive on a USB drive I carry on my keychain, that way I can quickly install/uninstall it on any computer I need to access to transfer files over or something.

I have a strong suspicion that the NTFS driver included in Leopard will include read/write access (Apple hired the guy that was working on the original NTFS-3G Mac implementation to work for them with the agreement that the source code would go back to the Linux community - and he's changed his statements of when the source code would be released to the public in a way that directly correlates with Leopard delays.). The NTFS-3G/Mac Fuse implementation works, but it's hardly user friendly for people who aren't familiar with Linux/Terminal and don't wan to learn.