how to reformat a windows hard drive for a mac...

[cornerdealy]

My friend just got a mac mini, and the hard drive he used to have hooked up to his windows computer can't be accessed by the mac, cause it's in ntfs format....

he wants to know how to wipe it clean and reformat in fat32 so he can read/write to it on the mac.

If you know how, please give clear step by step instructions because both of us dont know much about computers. Thanks!

 

[Fleetwood Mac]

My friend just got a mac mini, and the hard drive he used to have hooked up to his windows computer can't be accessed by the mac, cause it's in ntfs format....

he wants to know how to wipe it clean and reformat in fat32 so he can read/write to it on the mac.

If you know how, please give clear step by step instructions because both of us dont know much about computers. Thanks!

A Mac can read, but not write to an NTFS formatted disk. How do you plan on connecting the disk to the mini? Is this an SATA 2.5 laptop drive or is it going in an eclosure?

 

[ahunter3]

With the NTFS disk attached to the Mac, boot the Mac, launch Disk Tools from /Application/Utilities, and it should "see" the NTFS drive and allow you to reformat it in a Mac-compatible format.

Actually, though, you should be able to read the NTFS disk, just not write to it. If it isn't mounting at all, you may have another problem.

 

[cornerdealy]

it does mount, and he can read from it, he just cant write to it, so i'll try disk utility

 

[cornerdealy]

ok, we figured it out...thanks.

 

[Star Destroyer]

i know this is late, but i had the exact problem last week, i used my macto re-format the HDD to MS-DOS and it is read/write by both windows and OS X...

How did you do it?

 

[cornerdealy]

im not exactly sure how he did it, i think he did it with a pc, not his apple. I'll let you know for sure when i talk to him again

 

[macintoshxiii]

dudes... you still can get the hdd working even if you format it on WIN.... i had mine running for both my mac and win... just that i need a firewire for PB while pc i use my usb 2.0 cuz my PB cannot power enough for the hdd while my win lappy only has got usb port. So try it.... good luck!