Hard Disks or Drives are great devices that keep your data stored and secure. When using an External HDD it is common that you might want to migrate it to other computers with a different Operating System. The following steps will show you just how to configure the drive correctly for that task.
Please note that you’ll be formatting the HDD. Any data will be lost if not backed up. YOU’VE BEEN WARNED! Now to the good stuff;
Working from a Mac:
1. Plug in your External HDD into any available USB port. (Don’t worry if it doesn’t show up on your Desktop)
2. Go to ‘Spotlight’ and type in the work ‘disk’;
Once the application ‘Disk Utility’ shows up hit enter.
3. This windows will come up showing all the HDDs currently connected to your Mac.
Select your External HDD on the left sidebar;
4. Click ‘Partition’ on the menu.
5. From the ‘Volume Scheme’ drop down menu select 1 Partition;
6. Now name your HDD whatever you want and choose ‘MS-DOS (Fat)’ from the Format drop down menu;
Note: Mac OS Extended format only works on Macs, so if you’ll only be switching the drive between Macs it is better to go for this option.
7. Once you’ve checked all your setting simply click ‘Apply’. This window will come up asking to corfirm; Just click ‘Partition’;
A progress bar will show indicating the progress;
Your HDD is now ready to use. The FAT32 (MS-DOS) Format works with any computer but there are some drawbacks; click here to find out more. Another popular format id NTFS. It is supported across Windows machines but can only be read when using on a Mac. The only work around this is NTFS-3G. It allows you to read and write NTFS formatted drives on a Mac. There are mixed reviews and reactions to how it functions but it’s worth giving it a try.
How to format a HDD for Windows tutorial is coming soon…
Yay everything works perfectly on the mac now,and pc