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[freethought]

I have a mac and pc laptop.

I need to format to FAT 32 so I can user the Ex-HD for both, but my mac keeps transforming it to a time machine backup, no matter what I set it to do.

Anyone have a simple step by step guide to format to FAT 32 that I can try? Found a few things online, but most of them are from years ago, and don't account for Vista and Snow Leopard.

Thanks

[Reappropriated]

I am not in any way technological savvy, but I did this before I left home and it was surprisingly easy.

First, turn time machine off, that will stop it from auto-formatting the hard-drive. Next, you can use the mac to format the drive into FAT32. If I remember correctly just right click on the drive and go to get info. There is a way to choose what type of drive you want. It took me about 5 minutes to figure out everything, you just have to look around a little. If you still cant figure it out just post again and I can look exactly how I did it when I have access to one of my external hard-drives.

[dazzed]

It should be easier to use it on the PC laptop. Just connect it to your laptop and go to your windows explorer. find the drive and format. Choose what kind of format you want FAT32 or NTFS. that's it.

FYI. Biggest format with Fat32 is 32 gig per partition

[freethought]

sorry, left something out.

It will no longer register on my PC, so I can't access it to format. And I can't seem to get access to the formatting options on my mac anymore either, though i can still transfer files to and from.

no idea what happened, or how to solve it. May have to call apple.

[dazzed]

You could always take it to come PC room or your friends PC and do it there.

[tatertot]

You might be able to use command-line arguments to reformat the hard drive in XP or Vista. In XP, first open the command line by typing "cmd" (no quotation marks) in the run program text box. Then, type "diskpart" (no quotation marks) in the command line program that pops up. If you are using Vista, type DiskPart.exe in Start Search. From here, it is the same.

If you type "list disk" it should give you a list of all disks plugged into the system. Find the disk you want to reformat then type "select disk #" where # is the disk you want to format. Make sure you select the right disk! If there are no partitions, or you don't care to preserve the partitions, type "format fs=fat32" and you are done. Type "exit" to close DiskPart.exe then you can close the window or type "exit" again. Hope this helps.

If you want to preserve a partition, then type "list partition" and then "select partition #" before you do the formatting.

edited for typo

[freethought]

thanks for the quick responses.

I finally got the apple disk utility to open and I've reformatted the drive.

I'm just not going to use time machine again.

[IlIlNine]

[blackjack]

[IlIlNine]

[Mr. Pink]

You DO NOT need to use FAT 32 for mac. I use NTFS drives on my mac all the time. There is a secondary program that you can get for mac that will let you read and write to NTFS drives. I am at work atm and cannot remember the name of that program. FAT 32 is way too limiting in file size and speed. DONT WASTE YOUR TIME.