so i have a pc formatted hard drive and no pc in sight. ive sucessfully moved the files i need from the hard drive to the mac but now i NEED to delete them asap!!!!!! like there are files there that need to be deleted/corrupted/whatever before i leave tomorrow as i am going to rome for 3 months and some of the files on the hard drive contain very personal information that i need to get rid of. but not all of the hard drive. only some files. so i need to know what i can do to get rid of files on an external hard drive that was formatted for PC using only a mac. please help me quick!!!!
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how do i delete off pc formatted hard drive?
- Thread starter MP3Architect
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OS X can't modify NTFS-formatted drives. It only has the ability to read them.
If you copied everything you need from the drive and want to destroy all information left on the drive, you can reformat it. Of course, OS X can't format something in NTFS. But, you can just format it in FAT and everything on the drive will be cleared and the drive will be usable. (Also, when formatted in FAT, it can fully accessed by OS X, Windows, and Linux.)
If you copied everything you need from the drive and want to destroy all information left on the drive, you can reformat it. Of course, OS X can't format something in NTFS. But, you can just format it in FAT and everything on the drive will be cleared and the drive will be usable. (Also, when formatted in FAT, it can fully accessed by OS X, Windows, and Linux.)
As above. Go into Applications>Utilities>Disk Utility and select the drive and erase to whatever file format you require. If you choose MS-DOS, it will be FAT32. Again, this may not be the best for any given system, but it is the most universal.
If there are any files you want to keep on there, drag them across to your Mac, (if enough space left on your Mac HD), and then back again when you have reformatted. The obvious choice I would say.
If there are any files you want to keep on there, drag them across to your Mac, (if enough space left on your Mac HD), and then back again when you have reformatted. The obvious choice I would say.
thanks guys. good idea. i formatted the drive to fat so it could still be used with PCs and i can finally edit with MAC.