Create two partitions on one hard drive?

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Level 1

91 points

Create two partitions on one hard drive?

Hi

I have an external hard drive I want to use for both PC and Mac.

Can somebody please help me on how to create two partitions on the hard drive, one with Mac extended format and one with NTFS format.

Many thanks

MBAir/13.3/1.86GHz/4Gb/128Gb, Mac OS X (10.6.4), Watercooled PC.

Posted on Nov 28, 2010 5:35 AM

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Answer 1

kn7671

Level 1

0 points

Nov 28, 2010 5:39 AM in response to 88_King

Will the Mac OS built-in Disk Utility not work for an external drive?

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Answer 2

88_King Author

Level 1

91 points

Nov 28, 2010 5:53 AM in response to kn7671

The Disk Utility programme does not have format to NTFS as an option.
The hard disk have 500Gb capacity, I want to format 200Gb to Mac OS Extended and 300Gb to NTFS.

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Answer 3

Nov 28, 2010 6:40 AM in response to 88_King

You'll need to download MacFUSE and NTFS-3G... both are free and you can find them with a google search. NTFS-3G will add an option in disk utility to Format a partition to NTFS.

Alternatively (my usual approach): Format the Windows partition to FAT then when you bring it to a windows machine, format the partition to NTFS.

-pbmarcano

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Answer 4

Tony T1

Level 6

10,232 points

Nov 28, 2010 6:54 AM in response to pbmarcano

pbmarcano wrote:
Alternatively (my usual approach): Format the Windows partition to FAT then when you bring it to a windows machine, format the partition to NTFS.

No need to format to NTFS, you can convert to NTFS with no destruction of data.

Just format to FAT in Disk Utility, then when accessing the FAT drive in WIndows:

*To convert a volume to NTFS from the command prompt*
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb456984.aspx

Open Command Prompt. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, and then click Command Prompt.

*In the command prompt window, type: convert drive_letter: /fs:ntfs*

For example, typing convert D: /fs:ntfs would format drive D: with the ntfs format. You can convert FAT or FAT32 volumes to NTFS with this command.

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Answer 5

88_King Author

Level 1

91 points

Nov 28, 2010 11:54 PM in response to pbmarcano

Hi pbmarcano

Thank you very much for your help. The NTFS-3G software worked perfect with Disk Utility.

To Tony

I didn't manage to get Command Prompt to work, must be something I did wrong at my end.

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Answer 6

Tony T1

Level 6

10,232 points

Nov 29, 2010 5:56 AM in response to 88_King

88_King wrote:
I didn't manage to get Command Prompt to work, must be something I did wrong at my end.

FWIW, if there was no data on the external drive, as pbmarcano said, you could have also just formatted the drive to NTFS with Windows (by opening Explorer, right-clicking the drive and selecting Format).

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