External Hard Drive - format for Windows?

S

skybolt

Registered
I recently bought a new external, and wanted to erase my older one and make it ready for my husband to use with his windows machines. I used disk utility, told it to erase and in the drop down box chose Windows (can't remember exactly what else it said, but it was the only option that mentioned windows). When he tried to connect it to his machine, his machine did not recognize it was there. So I connected to my PB, and thought I would reformat for him, but it doesn't mount there, either. After the erase, it did still show up on my desktop, so I know SOMETHING was there, but it just does not mount now to either machine.

Anyone got any ideas? Any way to get this ready for him to use?

Thanks in advance!
 
using search in this forum I found this for you with lots of thread where I believe you'll find an answer
 
Is there some reason your husband can't format the drive on his own machine?

Formatting a Windows drive on a Windows machine is usually a better solution than trying to format a Windows drive on a Macintosh computer... while it's completely possible, for maximum compatibility (and more format choices like NTFS), format the drive on the computer it will be used with.
 
Thanks to both of you for your responses. I checked the link you sent, and found several entries and read most of them. However, those links, and the most recent response here don't address the fact that neither machine will "see" the external. I can't format something I can't access, regardless of which machine I use. Some of the responses in the link mentioned attaching "both" cables to the external. This particular one is firewire only, and I know the firewire ports on both machines are operable, as we have tested with other devices. So, that's not the problem.

Any more ideas as to how I can "see" the drive on one computer or another -- preferably the windows, and the drive will be hubby's as soon as we figure out how to get the computer to recognize it.

Thanks again!
 
If neither machines will see the drive on the Firewire port, return the drive.
 
I can't return it -- it's about a year or two old and has been used as a backup drive for my PB. I am replacing it with a larger one to hold a clone of the PB, and my music and photos. Thanks, though!
 
Try mounting through Terminal;

Type:
disktool -l

to determine which volume names (also called mount points) correspond to which /dev/... device names.


hdiutil mount
 
Also, just because a drive won't "mount" does not mean that the computer doesn't "see" the drive. Does the device manager on the Windows machine acknowledge that the drive is connected to the FireWire bus? If so, you will be able to format it using the Computer Management utility (Control Panels > Administrative Tools > Computer Management).

If it's not recognized there, or by Disk Utility/System Profiler on the Mac, I would suspect something bad with the drive itself (or both sets of FireWire ports mysteriously gave out simultaneously on the computers!).
 
Thanks everyone for your help. We have tried everything suggested (except for the terminal -- not comfortable with that -- fairly new to macs). We know my firewire is fine, works great with the new external. The old one did not show up in system profiler when we tried it again tonight, nor did it show up when we searched as suggested on the windows machine. We have no reason to think that hubby's firewire is toast, though we have not tested it -- he has nothing firewire (thought he was GOING to have this drive, but guess not <grin>. We have pretty well decided that the drive is not working at all, so we will just make a paperweight out of it. I thought maybe I did something wrong when I told disk utility to erase>windows whatever it was. Maybe I should have gone into the partition pane and done something different there. After the erase, the volume showed up on my desktop with the new name just like I expected, so no thought that the drive itself was bad. Oh, well. Thanks again for your help!
 
As for your question about format, if both computers are going to use it, format it on your PC using the FAT32 file system.
 
could be the firewire on the hd died overnight, or the harddrive it self dies, which means you were very luck that it happened only after you reformated it. if it were mine, i'd be opening it and trying the hd in the computer to make sure it was ok, then trying a different hd in the case to see if the case was ok.
 
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