Problems with partitioning hard disk

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Fisico2000 Author

Level 1

15 points

Problems with partitioning hard disk

Hi, I have an external hard disk with 2tb capacity.

I want to create one partition of 1,5 tb to use with Time Machine and one partition with 500 gb to use both with windows and mac.

I have partitioned the first one in HFS extended and the second one in exfat, using the GUID partition table.

Now the problem: on the mac both the partitions work well.

In Windows, on the contrary, the exfat partition is not recognized. It says it is to be formatted a nd if I try to format it (in windows) it says it is not able to do this.

I don't know what is the problem, even if I think it can be in the GUID table used...

iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2012), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Feb 8, 2013 3:18 AM

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Answer 1

keg55

Level 6

11,743 points

Feb 8, 2013 6:41 AM in response to Fisico2000

I think you can have only one OPTION for the partition table map scheme which is for the entire drive.

So, when you created your two partitions (1.5GB Mac OS Extended - Journaled format and a 2nd for the rest of the space as ExfFat format) you chose the partition table map scheme as GUID, Windows will not see either partition. For Windows to see the ExFat partition, the partition map scheme has to be Master Boot Record.

I have never formated two different partitions like you and made the partition table map scheme Master Boot Record. I know the PC will see the ExFat partition, but I don't know if the Mac will see the other. Understand you won't be able to boot from the Mac formated partition since the drive is MBR. Try it! You will need to reformat the drive with your two partitions when you change the partition table.

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