External hard disk

[HSN]

Hi...

I have an external hard disk which is properly working under windows. When I mount it on a MAC OS X (iMAC), it'll become a read-only Volume! Please let me know how can I make it read and write at the same time?

thx

 

[DeltaMac]

You will find that your external disk is formatted NTFS, which is read-only on the Mac. This is a Microsoft problem, as they are not sharing the information for writing to that drive, or any way to modify files, except from Windows.
You can re-format the drive as a FAT32 volume, but then you will have file size limitations, and degraded drive performance - but you can then use on both systems. Or, you can format the drive as MacOS Extended from your Mac, and use MacDrive software on your PC to access the drives. But, MacDrive is not free.

 

[HSN]

You will find that your external disk is formatted NTFS, which is read-only on the Mac. This is a Microsoft problem, as they are not sharing the information for writing to that drive, or any way to modify files, except from Windows.
You can re-format the drive as a FAT32 volume, but then you will have file size limitations, and degraded drive performance - but you can then use on both systems. Or, you can format the drive as MacOS Extended from your Mac, and use MacDrive software on your PC to access the drives. But, MacDrive is not free.

Well, thanks for the help. Microsoft always is the cause of these problems.

 

[anerki]

Is there a way to format an external HD as Fat32 on a Mac? Or at least to a file system a Windows can read?

If not, what application do I use on a Windows to format an external HD to Fat32 (I'm completely clueless for Windows ...)

Thanks in advance,
Frederik-Jan

 

[bobw]

In Disk Utility, select the disk you want to format for Windows computers.
Click Erase and choose MS-DOS File System from the Volume Format pop-up menu.
Type a name for the disk.
The name's maximum length is 11 characters.

Click the Erase button, then click Erase again.