Hard drive formatting

[Tonestar1]

I have been given a 2Tb hard drive which was previously used to store windows server logs. I need to format it before using it to store my music files via macbook pro. I can either format it using my pc or my mac, will it make any difference? Are there any particular things eg setting to fat32 type stuff before I can store my music on it?

Expert opinions very welcome.

Thanks

 

[Anonymous]

How are you going to be using the disk, in a windows pc? linux? are you making a NAS / server? When you format you need to use the correct filesystem for whichever environment it is for.

 

[John Duncan]

Needs to be FAT32 if you want to read it with both your Mac and your PC. You can format it from either, but the Mac confusingly names the partition type 'MS-DOS' if I remember.

 

[Tonestar1]

Cheers gents.

I will only be accessing the drive via the mac. PC is company laptop so doesn't even have Itunes installed. I will be using firewire 800 to write and to access the drive as I'm told its much faster than usb(hard drive has both). As I intend to use this as my main source of storage I will also be hoping to back it up via something else (possibly time capsule) in a few months. Does this change anything?

 

[Anonymous]

Have a little read of this, might be of some help to you.

 

[John Duncan]

Was about to reply again and tell you that you can't format to FAT32 using Vista but that's moot from what you say above.

As for your backups, wouldn't change my advice, if only to allow you to access it from a Windows machine if needs be. I haven't used a Time Capsule but when I tried to set up Time Machine to my FAT32 external drive it wanted to format it to something else, so I suspect the TC is formatted HFS, but that may be moot also - my question would be whether you can actually use a Time Capsule to back up external drives - you should investigate that thoroughy beforehand...

 

[Tonestar1]

Thanks again folks.

 

[Anonymous]

Yes, Firewire 800 is more than twice as fast as USB2 so that's the way to go if possible. As for formatting, as you say you will be using it via a Mac only you will want to format it in HFS+ (also called Mac OS Extended [Journaled]). Assuming you know how to change your iTunes directory to the new 2TB drive so won't cover that. To format the new drive, go into your Applications folder, then in the Utilities sub-folder you will find an appllication called Disk Utility. In the left hand column highlight your new drive and then in the Partition tab you will have your formatting options - its very easy just click on the drop down box and choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

If you choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) than yes, you will be able to back any information up to a Time Capsule using Time Machine. I don't remember having to do any hacks or a work around so it should just work out of the box automatically. Only word of warning would be that although the new Time Capsule tops out at 2TB it is quite expensive and includes a wireless router of course which you may not need. It is a great device however so if that doesn't bother you, it works very well if a little slow on the initial backup over wireless (even using 802.11n). You can get Time Machine to work with another external hard drive - but either way, yes you can do everything you want to do pretty easily.

 

[aliEnRIK]

You CAN format FAT32 using Vista or XP using SWISS KNIFE

 

[Anonymous]

Whilst you may be able to format in XP to FAT32, it is not a good idea since you will be accessing it from a Mac. It is an old file system and importantly has a limit of 4GB file sizes (so ripping a DVD to later compress and encode won't be an option), not native to Mac (and from what I remember I think Spotlight won't index it). There is only one logical choice going by what you said you want to do and that's HFS+.