Formatting a PC formatted drive

Vard

Vard

Looking for progress
Here's a question related directly to my inexperience, even after almost 2 years, of messing with Mac hardware:

Can any old hard drive be formatted to work with OS X? I am looking on ebay for a used drive. I found one that meets my needs:

7200 rpm
40 (or more) gig
IDE interface

But it is currently formartted for a PC. So, can I just plug it in and format it? And will OS X or the system recognize it or are there jumpers and stuff like that that I need to set?

Any thoughts would be great.

Thanks,
Eddie
 
You think?

Hadn't thought about it like that.

Not a good idea then?

Thanks,
Eddie
 
To answer your question, though, YES, you can format a PC-formatted drive to work in your Macintosh. The format of the drive has nothing to do with compatibility of the drive with your system, just the kind of interface the drive uses. ANY IDE hard drive will work in your Macintosh.

You may need to set some jumpers on the drive to get it to work... you'll probably need to set one of the drives to the "Master" setting and one to "Slave" if you install them on the same bus (using the same IDE ribbon cable). It also may work to set both to "CS" (Cable Select) on your machine, but I'm not sure... master and slave should work.
 
EDCC...

I run into you everywhere.

Thanks...you addressed another one of my concerns. I'll have to look into it and see what happens.

Thanks again,
Eddie
 
Not sure about OS X, but in prior systems, Disk Utility wouldn't reformat a drive that had been formatted by a PC. Third party software like FWB HadrDisk Toolkit was needed.
 
Hmmm....good to know.....Something to consider....

And this is my 200 post....I really racing up the charts now! Look out!

Eddie
 
Just get behind arden and keep up. Your post count will increase dramtically.
 
Disk Utility will format a DOS or PC formatted drive, no problem-o. You may have to delete the current DOS or PC partition on the drive and create a new one, but it's not a daunting task and takes only two or three more clicks of the mouse to accomplish it.

I've got a lot of experience with both SCSI and IDE hard drives in a LOT of different configurations, so if you need any help getting that new drive into your machine, Vard, please don't hesitate to ask. Jumpers, formatting, partitions, cables, whatever -- those can all be intimidating to someone who's never done it before, but I assure you -- it's cake. The hardest part of the process is that damn power connector plug that plugs into the drive. I don't know why they haven't improved those damn things in ages... they fit so damn snugly you'll feel like you're gonna either break the drive or break the cable, and I've bruised my fingers before trying to get one of those off a drive... hehe...
 
Wow....

awesome EDCC...

I'll surely keep your offer in mind.

What a team we got here.

Thanks guys.

later,
Eddie
 
I'd like to confirm EDCC's post. I too have had great success with old PC formatted drives. I replaced a Snow iMac's HD with one and I added another drive to my G4 tower. I haven't had any problems with them.
 
Heh... hard drives are hard drives: the only difference between them is the kind of interface they use (ATA, SCSI, SATA). You can format a drive in any computer to use that system's native file system.

Sometimes when utilities fail to format a drive that was previously formatted with another file system, its because the utility doesn't understand the partition or partitions that were on the drive. You can ALWAYS delete the partitions, whether the system can read the partitions or not and create new ones and format them how you like.

Other things to look for when a utility fails to format a drive is jumper settings -- ATA drives usually just have 'master' and 'slave' settings, while SCSI drives sometimes have jumpers that control other features of the drive, such as spin up time and other kinds of hardware access features.
 
I got a seagate 80gb ultra 100. I installed it and it shows up in system profiler and disk utility but no icon. There are no directions for mac that came with it. Also, there are no directions on the mac or the mac manual. How do I format it?
 
Go into disk utility, click on the drive itself, click the "Partition" tab, and create your partitions there. You'll probably want one partition, Mac OS Extended format, or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) if you wanna install Panther on it.

Then click "Partition" down there at the bottom. Don't forget to check "Install Mac OS 9 Disk Drivers" if you ever wanna be able to "see" the drive under OS 9.
 
bobw, I can't find any options for formatting or initializing in the menus of Disk Utility... I think you're thinking OS 9 style... ;)
 
Sorry. Just click on the drives name, then click on Erase, then you'll get the format choice.
 
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