Reformat external Hard drive?

caz32

caz32

caz32

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Hey

I have a Hard Drive that I use for College and its coming near the end of my course.

When I bought the hard drive, It said "Mac Only", is it possible to reformat it and get it to work on my Windows 7 PC?

Thanks
 
Yea I have plugged it in, it says "failed to install device software" and in the system tray it says "unknown device" also it doesn't show up as removable storage in windows explorer
 
If you don't need a Mac formatted drive anymore then it may be possible to delete the existing partition using Windows Computer Management > Storage and create new NTFS volume, and format it as a logical drive. Got any details on the model of drive? If it's a standard USB or Firewire connection I don't see any problem with the above. If it fails due to some weird interface compatibility issue then you can always reformat it as a Mac drive. Of course you do know that reformatting will erase any data on the drive?
 
Mabee this:
Plug into puter Windows 7 etc format using a windows 98 floppy disk. Then insert into Windows 7 puter and you can format in the normal manner
 
Ziggy4 said:
If you don't need a Mac formatted drive anymore then it may be possible to delete the existing partition using Windows Computer Management > Storage and create new NTFS volume, and format it as a logical drive. Got any details on the model of drive? If it's a standard USB or Firewire connection I don't see any problem with the above. If it fails due to some weird interface compatibility issue then you can always reformat it as a Mac drive. Of course you do know that reformatting will erase any data on the drive?
Click to expand...

Ill try it, yea it has firewire and USB, its a seagate drive

and thanks other dude for suggestions ill give them all a shot.

edit: how do i get to the storage place? it comes up with Personalize Windows when I search for it?
 
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In Win 7 IIRC you can right click on My Comp. and one of the options will be Manage > Storage. Otherwise you can access the shortcut through Admin Tools on the Programs menu. I'll check tonight and let you know if you are still hunting around.

Edit: Think you can also go through the Computer menu (> Manage) in the main Programs menu. We're still on XP at work here. Gets bloody confusing sometimes with MS constantly moving / hiding menus with each iteration of the OS.
 
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Well I found it the way you said but my external hard drive isn't showing up in there

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Hmmm dunno then. I can only assume it's some very strange Mac only interface which would be surprising and a real pain. Your other option is to pull the drive and either mount it internally or get a new HDD caddie if you want to stay external.

You got a product link to your drive? Might help.
 
Hmm basically this in 320gb

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/external/freeagent/freeagent_go_mac/

Ok, after a bit of googling I found out that if you plug it directly into your motherboard it should come on, I done this and now its showing up, So I'll give it a shot.

And yea I know my stuff will be erased but I don't need the stuff on there any more, it's all been burnt onto disks etc
 
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