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DPChallenge Forums >> General Discussion >> My external HD doesn't show up on PC's
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Showing posts 1 - 12 of 12, (reverse)
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 02/09/2007 12:51:18 PM · #1
Yeah, I made an external HD out of my old MacBook HD (I upgraded, and got a 160GB HD). When I plug it into my macbook, the HD shows up. When I plug it into my desktop PC, I get that little dialog box saying that it recognized my USB device and it is installed and ready to use. But, I can't find it in "My Computer". Same goes for my girl's PC laptop.

The HD I pulled out of my MacBook is SATA; can that have anything to do with my problem? I didn't think so because the enclosure I have it in is USB.
 02/09/2007 12:53:58 PM · #2
The hard drive is probly formatted in a Mac OS specific format.

Format the drive Fat 32 or NTFS and PC's willr ecognize it. I know Mac OS 7 and up recognize Fat, 9 and up recognize Fat 32.... but for the sake of a 160 GB does Mac OSX recognize NTFS or is there another format that both PC's and Mac OS recognizes?

But for sure Windows XP and back will not recognize a Mac OS formatetd drive stock.

All in all Mac OS has adapted to read PC formated drives. But Windows does nto come with any stock ability to read Mac OS paritions. Lets say you took a drive formatetd in ext3 (linux). Your PC wont read it without othe rsoftware (like paragon mount everything).

Want the PC to read it format it with a PC!

Message edited by author 2007-02-09 12:55:14.
 02/09/2007 12:54:36 PM · #3
My guess is that it's Mac formatted, and Windows does not understand that. Reformatting it to NTFS should solve the issue.
 02/09/2007 12:55:20 PM · #4
what they said. :)
 02/09/2007 12:59:30 PM · #5
Ah, that makes sense! I didn't even think about it. Stupid Microsoft, making life hard.

Are there any pros/cons to going from Mac format to NTFS?
 02/09/2007 01:08:07 PM · #6
Originally posted by bigalpha:
Ah, that makes sense! I didn't even think about it. Stupid Microsoft, making life hard.

Are there any pros/cons to going from Mac format to NTFS?


There shouldnt be any.

Heres something to look at and understand. When u burn a CD on a Mac or a PC (windows or linux) it doesnt matetr what u burned it on all three read it. Thats because the filesystem they use is all the same ISO 9660 i believe theres a couple others.

When you download a file from the internet its stored in a specific way also and transnmitted thorugh the same protocal.

Now on Mac the way it used to be you had the file and then you had a resource fork and a data fork. When you stored a Mac QTV file on an ibm formatted floppy disk ud see all this two folders plus the file. But on your mac you dont see all of that. Old macs didnt accomidate for how windows file system worked but it understood how to write to a fat file table. Converters back then would merge the forks into one file.

NOW DAYS. Lol When Mac OS writes to a PC formatted disk it writes it the same way windows does. When it writes to a mac partition it write sit the way mac does. It has nothing todo with microsoft being as pain in the ass. Its like asking a ford computer to run a chevy fuel injection system.... you cant actually expect it even thoughs its actually possible.

OLD OLD OLD original Mac File System sucked balls! It was slow and inefficient. But i mean its been long since replaced so i dunnk how it is these days.

Message edited by author 2007-02-09 13:09:08.
 02/09/2007 01:14:32 PM · #7
Yeah, this is one time I've got to stick up for Microsoft. In fact, Microsoft is better for this than anyone else.

Almost all multi-compatible devices are either FAT16 or FAT32.

I would recommend you format the drive as FAT32. It's more compatible than NTFS. In fact, certain media devices could also use it if it's formatted as FAT32.

Here's the catch, Microsoft decided no one needs to format beyond 32 gigs or they will use NTFS based formatting. Not the case. But Microsoft's format tool will not go beyond 32gigs.

However, I believe Partition Magic and other formatting tools will allow you to format much larger partitions in FAT32.

- Jason
 02/09/2007 01:28:27 PM · #8
Originally posted by theSaj:
Yeah, this is one time I've got to stick up for Microsoft. In fact, Microsoft is better for this than anyone else.

Almost all multi-compatible devices are either FAT16 or FAT32.

I would recommend you format the drive as FAT32. It's more compatible than NTFS. In fact, certain media devices could also use it if it's formatted as FAT32.

Here's the catch, Microsoft decided no one needs to format beyond 32 gigs or they will use NTFS based formatting. Not the case. But Microsoft's format tool will not go beyond 32gigs.

However, I believe Partition Magic and other formatting tools will allow you to format much larger partitions in FAT32.

- Jason


Actually Fat32 is a 32 bit format. Fat 16 is a 16 bit format. Last I checked the maximum that a 16 bit filesystem could address is 8.3 GB. Fat 32's limit is suppsoed to be something like 2 Terabytes or so they said in Win98 but the limit seemed to drop at 32 GB i dunno why.

Eitherway theirs an actual mathmateical limit to each file systems design.
 02/09/2007 01:32:12 PM · #9
FAT32 might very well be more compatible, and if you *need* to have the drive read by non-PC computers or devices, then perhaps it's worth it. Remember, though, that the largest single file that can be written to a FAT32-formatted drive is 4GB.
If you don't need to access the drive on non-PC hardware, use NTFS. It's a much more robust file system. NTFS was designed to accommodate large volumes, whereas FAT was originally designed to be used only for floppy disks.
 02/09/2007 01:42:46 PM · #10
Yeah, I'll need the HD for backing stuff up, so I'll do the NTFS. I have lots of big files. Man, this is the best place to get advice and info!

I'm in the process of re-moving my pictures from my PC to macbook and boy is it taking forever! I have >15k files, and it's only halfway done. I still have an hour to wait; and I've already waited two. Once I get my pictures on here (again) then I'll put more in my portfolio.
 02/09/2007 01:58:54 PM · #11
Originally posted by kirbic:
FAT32 might very well be more compatible, and if you *need* to have the drive read by non-PC computers or devices, then perhaps it's worth it. Remember, though, that the largest single file that can be written to a FAT32-formatted drive is 4GB.
If you don't need to access the drive on non-PC hardware, use NTFS. It's a much more robust file system. NTFS was designed to accommodate large volumes, whereas FAT was originally designed to be used only for floppy disks.


The 4GB per file limit makes alot of sense (in my world) seeing how 32bit processors cant address more then 4GB of ram sadly my board supports 4GB whichis readable under Windows 2003 Server but it seems XP only sees 2GB.
 02/09/2007 02:53:39 PM · #12
Originally posted by RainMotorsports:
The 4GB per file limit makes alot of sense (in my world) seeing how 32bit processors cant address more then 4GB of ram sadly my board supports 4GB whichis readable under Windows 2003 Server but it seems XP only sees 2GB.


Addressable memory has nothing to do with file size. If you had a 16GB video file, you could still play it on a machine with 256M of RAM.

Using PAE even 32-bit processors can address up to 64GB of RAM, anyway.
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