# How to format a MAC drive (external)



## Blade_Jones (Feb 5, 2005)

I'm a Windows user so this is a stupid question.... Using a MAC computer how do I format an external drive that will be recognized by Windows and MAC? I'm used to being able to right click and format. :4-dontkno


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

first, plug the drive in to the mac. if your lucky, the finder will see the drive, and that its not formatted, and let you know, asking you to format it. in the pull down menu of the diag box select ms-dos format. then give your disk a name and click the ok/format/erase button. when its done, it should mount on the desktop ready for use. if the diag box never comes up, then goto the application>utilities folder. find disk utility and launch it. inthe left side of the main window it will list all current disks that it sees, with the partitions of each drive. select the drive that you want to format, and then in the center of the main window click on the erase tab. in the pull down menu select ms-dos and then click the erase button. when its down, it will mount the drive on the desktop. either way, when on a mac, remember to drag the external drive's icon to the trash icon in the dock (it should change to an eject icon) to dismount it before unplugging it from the computer. if you don't do that, you will cause damage to the file system of that disk, and even to the mac's hard drive and any other mounted disks.
anywho, what the ms-dos format that the mac uses is just fat32. so if you take that same unformatted disk and plug it into a windows computer to format it, just make sure that you tell it to format it fat32, not ntsf, and the mac will read and write to the disk.


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## Blade_Jones (Feb 5, 2005)

> format it fat32, not ntsf


The drive was previously formatted in ntsf. I tried to re-format it in fat32 but it doesn't allow that option. I'll have to try the mac format.


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

with it being in ntsf, you may not be able to format it on the mac. i'm not sure on it tho. if the mac won't, then i'd put it back on the windows pc, and use it to blow the partition table away, but not format it (if you need to know who to do that, let me know. i know win xp too). then it will be in a like new state which will let the mac format it for sure.


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