# how to format an external hard drive on Mac 10.3.2?



## thistleblue (Jun 13, 2004)

I don't have a Mac. My research assistant job requires me to edit video on Mac. I bought a 120G external hard drive (actually a kit and an internal drive put together). I formated it on PC, but all the data I put on the drive through Mac are not readable. I guess it would be fine if I format the external hard drive on Mac. Could anybody please tell me how to format the external drive on the campus Mac 10.3.2? I don't have administer's password. THANK YOU SO MUCH!


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## Cheryl (Jun 13, 2004)

Welcome to the forum. 

You have discovered that pc format and Mac format are two different fishes. 

You will need to get some one at the computer lab to help you. You need to be an administrator to add equipment - the external hard drive - format it, then edit the video and save it to the drive. 

How large is the video? It might be easier for you to save it to a zip disk, if those computers in the lab have zip drives.


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## DeltaMac (Jun 14, 2004)

If this external drive will be used ONLY on a Mac, then the best way to go is: open Disk Utility (in your /Applications/Utilities folder) select your external drive. Choose partition, then select your partition in the list, and click remove (or erase), that should give you a Mac partition by default.
IF YOU CAN'T SEE THE PARTITION on the Mac, the partition info has to be removed on a PC first!
If the drive has to be shared between PCs and Macs, then (if you have OS X 10.3 or later on the Mac) NTFS format will work, as long as you don't have to write to the disk from the Mac. NTFS will be READ-ONLY. If you need to write to the drive, then FAT32 is what works, both on PC and Mac


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