Incompatible file system

Question

Level 1

4 points

Incompatible file system

Hi,

Using a MBP 10.6.6 - My external hard drive (1.5 TB Samsung G3 Station Media) is currently formatted with MS-DOS (FAT) file system mainly to use the external hard drive compatible with Windows PC to copy multimedia files and movies.

Only recently after the format I realised that I can't use the Time Machine anymore because of the compatibility issue. Is there a way out of this?

I do share my external hard drive with other Windows PCs. Any suggestions is highly appreciated. Thank you.

MacBook Pro 2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X (10.6.6), 2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

Posted on Mar 8, 2011 3:16 PM

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Answer 1

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,739 points

Mar 8, 2011 3:38 PM in response to Vignesh85

There's no way to use a FAT volume as a TM backup, no. What you could do is create two partitions, one FAT and one HFS, and use the HFS volume for TM. The partitioning will destroy all data on the device, so you need to back it up first.

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Answer 2

bdmarsha

Level 4

2,580 points

Mar 8, 2011 3:44 PM in response to Vignesh85

Try formatting the drive using a GUID partition scheme and make two partitions, one FAT, and one MacOS Extended. Both partitions should be readable on Mac, but only the FAT partition would be readable on Windows. I am not sure if all Windows computers can deal with a GUID partition scheme as opposed to Master Boot Record but it is worth trying.

bd

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Answer 3

Vignesh85 Author

Level 1

4 points

Mar 8, 2011 7:38 PM in response to Linc Davis

Thnx Linc! I formatted the drive with 2 partitions - 75% Multimedia and 25% Backup with the suggested file systems. MS-DOS (FAT) and MAC OS Extended with GUID Schema. Boom! I tried a backup in TM and it worked. I quickly used the PC at work and the other partition recognised and tried a file transfer and it worked fine.

The MAC recognises both the partitions and the Windows does recognise the FAT which is what I want.

Thank again for ur help.

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Answer 4

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Mar 8, 2011 3:46 PM in response to Vignesh85

In addition to Link's advice, use the GUID partition map scheme. Time Machine may work with MBR, but backups often fail after a dozen GBs or so.

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Answer 5

Vignesh85 Author

Level 1

4 points

Mar 8, 2011 7:41 PM in response to Pondini

Hi Pondini,

As suggested I did use a GUID partition scheme and did a backup (~250GB) and it worked absolutely fine 🙂 thank you.

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Answer 6

Vignesh85 Author

Level 1

4 points

Mar 8, 2011 7:43 PM in response to bdmarsha

O la la, great help! Did exactly what you suggested. 2 partition FAT, Extended and it worked fine on Vista X64 and Mac OS X 10.6.6. thanks ton.

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