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General discussion

Format options external hard-drive?

Oct 22, 2007 5:44AM PDT

I need to use an external hard-drive to move audio files between a PC and a Mac (Mac G5 w/OS 10.4). I heard that there is one format option for the drive that will allow it to be recognized for both OS systems. What is that format? On my Mac's Disk Utility, the only choices I see are: Mac OS Extended; Mac OS Extended (Journaled); Mac OS Extended (case sensitive); UNIX File System.

Discussion is locked

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FAT32 and Fat16 are both recognized.
Oct 22, 2007 6:13AM PDT

How one gets a mac to format your HD to that (if it's already in apple journeyed mode), I haven't a clue.

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FAT 32
Oct 22, 2007 6:19AM PDT

Yes, that's what I remember. How does one find out if the drive is formated that way? I just did a test with my OS Extended drive, and our Sympyony was able to write a file to it easily (maybe it had separate software to allow this), and of course our ProTools Mac can read the drive.

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Plug the drive into your mac...
Oct 22, 2007 6:56AM PDT

Select the icon on the desk top.

Press command + i and an information window will pop up giving you all the information about the selected drive, including how it is formatted.

grim

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Apple-i
Oct 22, 2007 7:29AM PDT

Yes, this tells me that the drive is formatted in Mac OS Extended, but what about FAT 32. Is the drive FAT 32 by default? I'm not sure what FAT 32 means except that I read that both a PC and a Mac can read/write to a drive that is formatted in FAT 32. I'm FAT 38, does this count? Oh wait, that's my waist size.

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FAT 32
Oct 22, 2007 7:44AM PDT

I could be wrong (generally I am...just ask my wife), but isn't FAT 32 a format that needs to be done via a PC? I think I have what I need for the moment.

Thanks,
Dan

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Got the FAT 32 answer!
Oct 22, 2007 8:08AM PDT

If I connect the drive to a Mac and format it as DOS, then this is FAT 32 and both a PC and a Mac will recognize it.