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Forums › Mac OS › External HDD Formatting help for PPC AND Intel usage


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Topic # 27401 24-Oct-2008 13:49
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I have a few questions about a new FW400 external HDD I picked up for use with a PowerPC iBook and an Intel MacBook, both running 10.5.x

I want to use the drive on both systems - in order for this to be "bootable" will I need to partition it using Apple Partition Map? If I use GUID, how will this affect the iBook usage of the drive?

Also, if I want to use this for a Windows PC also via USB, I presume I'll need to format it NTFS instead (Windows XP)?

If I do that, does that make it non-bootable on the Macs?

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  Reply # 173390 24-Oct-2008 16:30
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APM is PowerPCs. GUID is for Intel Macs, although APM also works fine with them.

MBR is for Windows booting.

AFAIK, Macs can't boot from NTFS drives. And that's what you need to format your drive with if you want to use it on both Windows and Mac, although to write to NTFS on Mac you need an external program. With FAT32 it works fine (read/write), but can't handle files larger than 4Gb.

Another option (and it's the one I use) is to get MacDrive for Windows and format your drive with standard HFS+ (MacOS Extended). MacDrive reads and writes to it transparently, as if it were a normal Windows-formatted drive.




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  Reply # 173398 24-Oct-2008 17:01
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Thanks for your reply. I'll look into MacDrive.

Currently I'm thinking that as I'm so happy with OS X, that I will just format the ext. HDD in Mac format, and if the PC needs access (which will probably be on a decreasing frequency), that I'll just utilise the gigabit networking capabilities of the machines.

Sure it will be fiddly at times but I think I can live with it.

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