Formatting an external Hard Drive?

I have a new Toshiba 1T External hard drive (PH3100u-1EXB). I have an Intel iMac running OS 10.4.11 and a MacBook Pro with 10.6.7 I do not have any PC's and do not think I'll be use this drive with any. I would like to use this drive for back-up and storage of my camera's media. While using the MacBook, I tried putting some content on the drive (successfully), but when I went into iMovie, the app didn't recognise that the hard drive had any content. iMovie saw the drive, but there was an exclamation point next to it. The Toshiba came formatted as MS-DOS (FAT). Do I need to reformat the drive and what format do I use? Thank you.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.7)

Posted on Jul 4, 2011 11:00 AM

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6 replies

Jul 4, 2011 12:14 PM in response to Jvproductions

Do this:


Drive Preparation


1. Boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.


If you are preparing an external or a non-startup drive, then open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.


2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.


3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options or Security button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.


4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.


5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.


6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.


Steps 4-6 are optional but should be used on a drive that has never been formatted before or is new, if the format type is not Mac OS Extended, if the partition scheme has been changed, or if a different operating system (not OS X) has been installed on the drive.

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Formatting an external Hard Drive?

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