external hd on Macs
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- pr2
I bought wester digital 80gb external hd which i formated on Windows XP (NTFS) now i want to hook it up to the Mac (OS9). Yet it wants me to format the drive...
Any solutions?
- nerdtech0
make sure you have a back up before trying anything.
try hooking it up, saying no to the reformat, then running Norton Disk Doctor. it might recognize that there is a drive there even if it was windows formatted, then after it runs, you might be able to read it.
I really don't know though. I had a mac formatted one crap out on me, and it was asking to reformat it, so I ran Norton on it, and it recognized the drive, fixed it, and now its fine. So maybe it will work with yours. like I said, back it up first though.
- unknown0
you'd need to be using osx or maybe some software like pcmaclan or something may help you out.
- df1notfound0
os9 was made around the time when NTFS was rarely used so that might be why, should have done it fat32 or whatever and i doubt you would have had problems
- pr2-1
yeah, but the firs thing i get when i pop the drive in FireWire here at school is that it wan't to format it...
- pr2-1
yeah, but the hd is 80gb while fat32 allows only for like 10gb...
- jpea0
neither OS X nor OS 9 can read an NTFS formatted disk. Only 2 solutions:
erase the whole darn thing and format it with a couple partitions, one being NTFS for your main computer and then other being either FAT32 or with MacDrive 2000 (on windows) format it with HFS+.
The other option... oh, i guess there really isn't another option.
Good luck....
btw: does anyone know if you do this (format with NTFS and HFS+ on two partitions) you're able to use it on the mac as a bootable firewire disk?