Setting up an external hard drive with 10.6.4?

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Level 1

8 points

Setting up an external hard drive with 10.6.4?

Hey, guys. I'm not too sure if this is in the right topic, but I haven't been able to find help anywhere else...
Today I bought a WD My Passport external hard drive to move things from my MacBook to my new PC. My MacBook recognized the drive and worked perfectly, except when I tried to reformat it for Mac it said 'Cannot dismount volumes: One of the volumes on the device is busy and cannot be dismounted.'

Anyone have any idea what to do? I need to set this up urgently! Thanks in advance.

Message was edited by: Paiyrx

Macbook, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Dec 7, 2010 5:22 PM

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Answer 1

Limnos

Level 10

411,121 points

Dec 7, 2010 5:53 PM in response to Paiyrx

If by "new PC" you mean a Windows based machine you do not want to format the drive for Mac because Windows cannot read Mac formatted drives (not without extra utilities). I'm running an older system so I'm not as up on the capabilities of Snow Leopard. For PC use you will want NTFS or FAT32 format except Macs cannot write to NTFS without extra utilities (not sure if this has changed with newer OS)... I just use FAT format for compatibility with PCs (on my flash drive).

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Answer 2

Paiyrx Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 7, 2010 5:50 PM in response to Limnos

Ah, I changed the format with Disc Utility and now it's working perfectly with read and write permissions - thanks so much!

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