Well, the guy at Dick Smith sold me a Seagate 3TB expansion drive to fit to my mac. I want to move it between my macbook pro and my Humax satellite decoder to download/watch movies. I figured I could format it FAT32 and all would be good. Apparently this drive can't be formatted FAT32. What are my options? Is there a way my mac can read PC format (is it nfts or something like that)? Help!
After searching around a bit it looks to me like Paragon might be the best option. What do you think?
Format it exFAT with a Windows computer.
I read somewhere that exFAT is not good on these drives. I just downloaded a trial of Paragon and that seems to work. Do you know of any exFAT problems?
I do have 1 one those drives but I don't own anything that need the drive to be formatted in that way. I only have Mac computers. So the drive is formatted in the OS X format.
Thanks LL. My Humax satellite decoder will recognise FAT32 but not NTFS, so the Paragon fix is of no use. Well at least I know I can use it on my Mac. I have a 1TB disk for backup and time machine. I could swap them around. Dunno how I will ever fill 3TB though.
I wonder if the Humax will read exFAT. Heck I thought this would be easy.
How did you format it from NTFS? I only got a read option before installing Paragon.
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Connec the drive to your Mac and open Disk Utility. Select the drive from the list on the left, the top level entry for that drive (model number and size entry) and then the Partition tab at the top. Once in the partition section select the partition layout drop down and select One Partition. Then click the option button at the bottom and select the partition table of GUID. close the options window and select Mac Extended Journaled as the format and give the volume a name, like Seagate 3TB. Then click the Apply button. Drive will be repartition as one partition and formatted in the OS X, Mac, format.
billfromwandering wrote:
Thanks LL. My Humax satellite decoder will recognise FAT32 but not NTFS, so the Paragon fix is of no use. Well at least I know I can use it on my Mac. I have a 1TB disk for backup and time machine. I could swap them around. Dunno how I will ever fill 3TB though.
I wonder if the Humax will read exFAT. Heck I thought this would be easy.
How did you format it from NTFS? I only got a read option before installing Paragon.
Do not use Paragon, no need: format it on your mac as ExFat, like LowLuster said. When you format it on the Windows computer, format it as Fat32.
You can use it now on both.
Lex the problem with FAT32 is you can't have any one file over 4GBs in size. Most movies are over that limit and won't copy to a FAT32 formatted drive.
I think that is where the OP is running into problems. Also I'm not sure a 3TB drive can be formatted FAT32. I haven't looked up the size limit for FAT32 but it might end at the 2TB size.
LexSchellings wrote:
Do not use Paragon, no need: format it on your mac as ExFat, like LowLuster said. When you format it on the Windows computer, format it as Fat32.
You can use it now on both.
I was needing to make my new 3TB HDD FAT32 as i am using it to transfer and watch movies on my ps3 and ps3 can only read FAT32. After hours of seaching I found this solution and it has worked for me. I am still unsure what is going to happen if i go over 2TB of info but it works fine i have already tranfered a movie from my mac to the HDD and then watched it on my ps3. I suspect this would also work for Xbox360 and in your case Humax satellite decoder.
Re: FORMATING 3TB EXPANSION DRIVE TO FAT32 MAC
POSSIBLE SOLUTION: That worked for me (3TB Fat32)
This worked for me but I have only tested it for a few hours now. I will report back in a month when the drive has seen serious use.
I too ran into the same problems and did the following...
* each disk volume shows a higher archy which I believe is showing the partions. eg...
3TB Seagate External Media
|__ 3TB (This is Partition #1)
|__ 8,000TB (This is where partion #2 would show up but it doesn't exist right now)
open Disk Utility > Select the Top '3TB Seagate External Media' from the list on left not the sub '3TB' (bottom) > click 'erase' tab > first choose 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)' > click 'Erase...' > Close the disk utility program > Re-open the disk utility program > Choose the top '3TB Seagate External Media' from the list on the left again > Click the 'Partitions' tab > Change 'Volume Scheme' to '1 Partition' > for 'Volume Information' Fill in a name > Choose MS-DOS (FAT) which by default will be FAT32 > set Size to 3TB > click Apply
DONE!
I am running OS 10.6.8 on an iMac
Given the claimed limit of 2TB capacity when using Fat32 I am nervous that when I try to fill over 2TB it may not be possible to do so. If that is the case I am hoping that I will be able to create a second 1TB partion using 'Disk Utility' and the unused free space.
Seagate claims that Fat32 is not good for long time use with Mac but I have used it for 3yrs with a now full 1TB external drive and 2yrs with a 2TB half full drive.
The 3TB disk can be addressed with 32-bit systems: they can not address more than 3TB (the address field is just large enough for 3TB), the file size for Fat32 is 4TB.
You should format as ExFat, which is compatible for both windows and OSX. And you can have files larger than 4TB (it is not compatible with Linux, unless you separately install Linux Exfat drivers).
Fitting a seagate 3TB expansion drive
