[ero2]

I use a Mac at home and a PC at work, and have tried to use it in between both but for some reason sometimes I have to completely format it after going from the mac to the PC, then back to the mac. Does anyone do this successfully all the time, if so what format is your FW drive formatted in? This is really my only option, and I have to transfer 2gigs of pictures today, cannot afford to lose them, and of course, the PC does not have a DVD burner...any help would be much appreciated.

[mduell]

You need to format it as FAT32 (probably using your Mac*) if you want to use it witih your PC and your Mac.

* The largest FAT32 partition you can create in Windows is 32GB, since that was the limit when FAT32 became deprecated in Windows (at a time when 32GB drives were huge/unavailable).

[ero2]

so the best way, if it is 200gb, is to partition, 170 and 30, and format the 170 Mac OS journaled, and the 30 MS-DOS? The mac in disk utility does not give an option of FAT32 I don't think?

Thanks for the help, you've been helping me out a lot lately, LOL

[mduell]

You can format the whole 200GB as FAT32 from Disk Utility on OS X. I'd do that.

[ero2]

Originally Posted by mduell

You can format the whole 200GB as FAT32 from Disk Utility on OS X. I'd do that.

I am a bit confued. When I go to format that drive it offers a bunch of MAC options, and then MS-DOS file system. I presume FAT 32 is MS-DOS file system, am I correct?

[mduell]

Yes.

[anthology123]

if you format the 200gb drive to all fat32, it may be visible on the Mac, but will all 200 gb of it be visible on the PC or just the first 32 gb? wondering.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by anthology123

if you format the 200gb drive to all fat32, it may be visible on the Mac, but will all 200 gb of it be visible on the PC or just the first 32 gb? wondering.

All of it will be visible on the PC. Windows can read/write from/to FAT32 partitions of any size (up to the 2TiB limit), but the disk formatting utility only supports creating partitions up to 32GB.