I have an external hard drive I used when I had a PC and I want to use it as a backup for my Mac. I've read a bunch of articles on splitting the storage between Mac and PC but I'm worried that I will lose everything that I already have saved to the drive. How can I do this without losing any files?
Thanks
Put the content on it onto a second external drive. Regardless of anything else, a drive will eventually fail.
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You need to completely repartition and reformat the drive for use on a Mac. After you do that then it would be possible to partition off some space for old PC files.
Drive Partition and Format
1. 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. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Apply 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 Security 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, 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.
external hard drive
