[G4] External HD Formatting Question

[Tony Johansen]

On 24/10/2005 1:21 PM, "Ron Michael" <ronmichael at gmail.com> wrote:

> I have a Mac G4 1.35mhz mirror door. Bought a new USB external hard
> drive enclosure with a Maxtor 160HD in it. When I initialized it
> originally I was on my Mac so it's formatted as a Mac journaled. I
> wanted to use this as a plug and play on my Mac and my Win XP laptop.
> Now it's full of stuff and my Win XP won't recognize it. Shouldn't my
> Windows machine see it anyway? Forgive me for throwing in a Windows
> question here please, but it's really a Mac G4 question, too. Any ideas
> on how to correct this?


 You don't say how much stuff is on the Maxtor, but if it were me and I had
enough space back on another hard drive (and there wasn't too many GB
involved) I'd move the stuff off the Maxtor, then re-format as Fat 32. XP is
not flexible enough to use the Mac journaled format, but OS X is capable of
utilising the Windows format Fat 32. In fact LaCie external hard drives come
formatted Fat 32 and sales staff are happy to tell Mac users that it is
already formatted for Mac. Not strictly true, since OS X will work faster on
Mac Journaled than on Fat 32, but it is true that a Mac OS X can use both
formats.

A simpler solution (but it costs), with hard drives getting cheaper, and
hard drive needs ever expanding is to get another drive, format it for the
XP and enjoy the extra space :-)

There is software available that can adjust sizes of partitions on drives
without deleting the contents of the partition, Maybe someone familiar with
this could relay if it is possible to add a partition and format that
partition without disturbing the original contents. It sounds too good to be
true, but it may be an avenue to investigate.

Best of luck,

Tony
http://www.tonyjohansen.com
A Life Of Art