How can i use my seagate with a mac and pc?

6 best portable hard drives for mac image

Q. I have a Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex ultra portable hard drive and am using a macbook os x. The first time I plugged the seagate in I accidentally chose to use it with time machine but I don't want this. How do I correct this? Also I don't see any software installer. Ideally I would like to be use this with my mac and PC. Someone pls help!! Oh and dumb it down not very technical at all.

Answer
Remember that when you format a drive you will lose all data on the drive.

If you don't need any of the data on the portable hard drive then format it with something that will work on both the Mac and the PC. if you format it, all of your data will be gone, so only do this if you do not need any of the data.

Normally the Mac will read about anything, the PC is more picky.

The way to do this is to plug the drive into the Mac (assume it is USB). Then use Disk Utility to format it.

I'm looking in Disk Utility right now on my Macbook (Mac OSX version 10.6.5) and it shows that you can only format the drive with Mac OS extended format (which will most likely not work on the PC) and FAT which should work on both the Mac and the PC.

To find disk utility click on the spotlight icon in the upper right corner of your mac (looks like a magnifying glass). Type Disk and you will see Disk Utility in the applications section. Click on Disk Utility and you will see the portable drive listed on the left hand side. Make triple double sure you have the correct disk! Click the Erase tab and Disk Utility will tell you what the format type is currently on the disk. Choose FAT and this will totally erase your disk and format it with FAT (stands for File Allocation Table)

Try it by copying a file to the drive, then plug it into the PC and see if you can see the file.

I also am pretty sure you can format the drive on the PC using NTFS and it will work on both the Mac and the PC. It would be easy to try it and see if that works.

There are other ways to share files that are easier. You can do file sharing between a mac and a pc on your network. Setting it up is harder, but once you get it setup it is a breeze to copy files. If you only have a few files to share and you don't want to mess with setting up a network share, then use dropbox. You can find it for free here for up to 2GB: www.dropbox.com and if you want to give me some dropbox credit click here: https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTE5MjEzMTM5?src=global0
Dropbox is pretty nice and easy to use.

How to retrieve files on a WD external hard drive with a mac.?

Brandon

I used a portable hard drive to back up some files from a PC. Now I need to retrieve those files using a mac. when I try to open the hard drive it tells me that it is not readable. How can I make this thing work so that I can get my files.

Answer
Answer for Windows 7 and OS 10.6.8:

The drive volume has errors. Windows doesn't care much about errors. OS X does, so it won't mount. Repair it on the Windows system like this....
-- Right-click the drive volume in "Computer".
-- Choose "Properties".
-- Choose "Tools".
-- At "Error checking", click the "Check Now" button.
-- Put a check mark (tick) for "Automatically fix file system errors".
-- Put a check mark (tick) for "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors".
-- Click the "Start" button.
-- Click to unmount.
-- Wait.

To do this in OS X....
-- Download and install either NTFS-3G or SL-NTFS (latter for OS 10.6.7 or later 64--bit).
-- Restart.
-- Connect the drive. At the alert message, click "Ignore".
-- Open Disk Utility.
-- Select the external volume ("Volume" is the partition name, probably faded appearance).
-- Select the "First Aid" tab.
-- Click the "Repair Disk" button.
-- Wait.

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