How can I partition my portable hard drive to save files both from my MAC and from an old PC?

portable hard drive to fat32 format image

mr blonde7

I just want to save a ton of files from my MAC to my portable hard drive and if possible, also save files from my PC. I was told the hard drive can be 'partitioned' but have no idea how. I'm fairly clueless regarding all things tech so please use keep it simple LOL.

Answer
You have two options.

1) You can format the drive to FAT32 (MS-DOS in OSX) to make it both PC and Mac compatible. This will allow it to be used on both types of system without partitioning. This is the best option, except that this format won't allow file transfers of single files larger than 4GB in size.

2) You can follow the link below to learn how to use Disk Utility to partition your drive, created two partitions on the one drive, format one for Windows(NTFS) and one for OSX(Max OS Journaled). This will give you storage space for both Operating Systems, but you wouldn't be able to copy items between the systems. By default, OSX cannot read and write a NTFS drive, and Windows cannot read and write to a Mac OS Journaled drive.

http://macs.about.com/od/applications/ss/diskutilitypart.htm

How to format a hard drive to work with Mac + PC?

Elliott

I have a Lacie Starck 500GB Portable Hard Drive. Unfortunately it is only compatible with Mac, but I do a lot of crossing over between Windows and OSX.
Can somebody please help me to format the device so it can be used on windows too?
This would be of great help!
Thanks.

Answer
FAT32

Powered by Yahoo! Answers

Title Post: How can I partition my portable hard drive to save files both from my MAC and from an old PC?
Rating: 100% based on 9998 ratings. 5 user reviews.
Author: Unknown

Thanks For Coming To My Blog