Format External Hard drive to Mac format.

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Level 1

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Format External Hard drive to Mac format.

Hey! I have a Seagate hard drive (1.5 TB) and I want to run it on my MacBook Air but it's in NTFS format. I don't want to download any 3rd party side to run it. I want to Convert the hard drive's format so that it's compatible with Mac. I have a back up of all my data (I know it erases data when re-formatting). First a dialouge box used to come up prompting to convert and re-format it. But now nothing happens. How do I re-format it so that it's in the Ma's format??

P.S --> I downloaded the NTFS third party thing (trial version) and it's expired (finally) so do I need to uninstall it too?

MacBook Air, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Oct 2, 2012 1:54 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

BGreg

Level 6

17,552 points

Oct 2, 2012 4:13 PM in response to Pranjal_Goel

Have you tried attaching it to your system, bringing up Disk Utility (in applications/utilities), click on it on the left, click the erase tab, erase it. Then click the partition tab, give it a name, indicate how many partitions you want, select mac os extended (journaled), and guid format?

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Answer 2

Pranjal_Goel Author

Level 1

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Oct 3, 2012 4:57 AM in response to BGreg

I haven't tried it. But what does partition do? And like am I supposed to choose only "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" ?? Because there are like 4-5 of them... Thank You btw!

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Answer 3

BGreg

Level 6

17,552 points

Oct 3, 2012 5:20 AM in response to Pranjal_Goel

Partition is what initializes the hard drive to a mac format. And mac OS extended (journaled) is what you want.

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Answer 4

Pranjal_Goel Author

Level 1

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Oct 3, 2012 5:41 AM in response to BGreg

Thank You!! 😀 So I hope one partition will be enough?

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Answer 5

BGreg

Level 6

17,552 points

Oct 3, 2012 6:23 AM in response to Pranjal_Goel

Most people use one partition. You might use two if you were going to have a dual boot system with different levels of the operating system, for example.

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Answer 6

Pranjal_Goel Author

Level 1

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Oct 3, 2012 7:21 AM in response to BGreg

Ohk! Thanx a ton!!

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Answer 7

Oct 24, 2013 4:04 PM in response to Pranjal_Goel

🙂 Thank you so much for the well detailed answer, it really helped didn't need to download any additional software or third party applications, just did as you said and it worked.

Thanks again

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