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Portable Hardrive Help!


Hendrix

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Basically,

I bought a portable hardrive (120gig, which only produces 111gig), from PC Tec Guys yesterday. Now it ran fine on a PC, I was swapping all my un-infected files from my Laptop to my PC last night with no trouble. Now I've noticed it uses NFST file system! (or something around that spelling). When I'm using a Mac I have to use FAT32 don't I ?

Now - I cannot re-format while on a Mac, but, It doesn't appear to have the selection when on a PC.

It doesn't have FAT32 on the list which you choose what you want to re-format your drive to.

It's a Seagate 120GB "Go" Portable Hardrive.

Who knows how I can change it, without having a ring/email Seagate?

Any help would be appreciated!

Cheers,

Hendrix

Edited by Hendrix
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I think you can't change it from NTFS, which means you can only read off it under OSX. And 111gb is standard after formatting.

Edit: Just found out you can use Disk Utility to change it to a standard OSX filing system.

Edited by UrbanPoet
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Just to re-assure what everyone else has said, plug the drive in, open Disk Utility found in Applications>Utilities then click on the portable drive there. Go to the "Erase" tab and you can reformat it there with a number of options on how thoroughly you want it done.

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You can also do it from Windows if you'd rather. They don't give you the option, so you have to do it manually.

Start + R

Type 'cmd' press (without the quotes) and press enter

If your hard drive is on E: (for example)

type 'format E: /FS:FAT32' (without the quotes) and press enter, obviously change the letter as appropriate.

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It should work, it's just a DVI connector, a USB connector for the USB ports and a FW connector for the FW ports.

Unless you don't have a dvi port on your graphics card, then you'd need a VGA to DVI connector.

EDIT:

http://www.tvcables.co.uk/cgi-bin/tvcables/DVI-VGA.html

I think that would do it!

Edited by JonMack
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Nah, FAT32 has Windows/Mac/Linux compatibility. It is marginally slower but pretty much irrelevant for an external drive. The other thing is that NTFS has support for files > 4Gb, which FAT32 doesn't - only a problem if you download DVD ISOs really. My 250Gb external came formatted as Fat32 (presumably for Mac compatibility).

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Seagate finally got back to me and said :

Dear Tom,

Thank you for your E-mail inquiry. With regards to your query, I would be glad to assist you.

Please click on the link given below to know how to format NTFS drive into FAT 32.

NOTE : Format will erase all the data on the drive.

Seagate does not recommend moving external drive between MAC and PC. The file system for MAC is HFS + and the file system for PC is NTFS. This will create a conflict which may cause data corruption or data loss. You can either use the drive only on Mac or only on PC but not on both. Using a FAT 32 formatted drive within the Macintosh environment is only recommended for a short period of time to transfer data.

Warning: Data corruption will be prevalent when using FAT 32 over an extended period of time in a Macintosh. Also you will have a 4 GB file transfer limitation.

For Live support contact Seagate Technical Support on 1-800-732-4283, support hours is 6 AM to 8 PM (MST).

If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us or email us and we would be glad to assist you further.

Thank you,

Jessica

Never heard of files being corrupted because people use both, ever :|

Also - I transfered 10gig of recorded material today. AIFF stuff. All in one go (Y)

Edited by Hendrix
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Oh yeah, I think FAT32 needs defragging more. Maybe. Either way it's only an issue if you are constantly using the drive. If you're using for data that you access only occasionally, it'll be fine.

I'll be doing loads of Transferring. And using it mostly every day.... remind me, de-frag ? ha ha.

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