should i reformat my hard drive or not?

**ingridients** · 01-01-2011, 09:22 PM

Happy New Year Philmuggers!

anyway, was hoping to get help cause I have a new hard drive (a present from the US

)
its this ONE
It's weird, when I first checked the website I'm pretty sure it said PC & MAC compatible, but then when I finally got it, it said for PC. Its full of exe installation files when I opened it so should I just reformat it for me to use it? - or let those files stay there and use the drive anyway?

It's supposed to be my first portable hard drive for my mac. I've had one before but its for a pc so I don't know if there's anything special i should do first before I use the drive. To start my year, I'm planning on organizing and transferring all my files from my mac and my previous drive to this new one.

**Sponsor** · 01-01-2011 09:22 PM

**lsalapare** · 01-01-2011, 09:29 PM

To save you from potential virus .exe files, you should re-format the drive and it's only gon take couple of minutes to do it..

**redticket** · 01-01-2011, 09:37 PM

I have this drive for 9 months now (but without the case

) and it's good. I'm using it to store my media files.

What kind of exe file are in there? Is it brand new? Mine has this seagate setup.exe installer and registration files...

I plugged it first to a PC laptop and run the setup installation and registration, then copied those files to a separate folder in my mac, then I formatted it using Disk Utility, (MS-DOS format) and transferred those files back again.

**ingridients** · 01-01-2011, 10:00 PM

thanks for the replies!

Yes its brand new, but my dad gave it to me without the box haha! So I didn't notice right away that its for a PC, only after opening it in Finder I saw Setup.exe and a folder with Installation and Registration files.. thanks for the tip, I'll do that.. but I've never reformatted on a Mac before.. how do i see the "MS-DOS format" on disk utility?

**redticket** · 01-01-2011, 10:09 PM

Just spotlight (Command+space bar) for "Disk Utility", then select the "1TB Seagate FreeAgent Go Media" on the left panel.

On the "Erase" tab, select the "Format type" (select from drop-down list), then click "Erase" on the bottom and it will be formatted.

**ingridients** · 01-01-2011, 10:17 PM

thank you so much!

i didn't know there was a shortcut for spotlight! haha i learn something new everyday

**macdrive007** · 01-01-2011, 10:24 PM

Using disk utility, make sure you reformat your external hard drive in HFS+ format (Mac file system) as it will easily be searchable later on by your Mac (Windows' NTFS & FAT32 file systems are not easily searchable by spotlight). However, you need the "macdrive" application to make this Mac file system readable with windows PCs.

If you use the NTFS file system, you need to install "NTFS-3G" in your Mac, as NTFS is not read by your Mac OOTB.

FAT32 file system is readable both by Windows & OS X, but is not easily searchable and has a large file size limitation.

**ingridients** · 01-01-2011, 10:27 PM

Originally Posted by macdrive007

Using disk utility, make sure you reformat your external hard drive in HFS+ format (Mac file system) as it will easily be searchable later on by your Mac (Windows' NTFS & FAT32 file systems are not easily searchable by spotlight). However, you need the "macdrive" application to make this Mac file system readable with windows PCs.

If you use the NTFS file system, you need to install "NTFS-3G" in your Mac.

FAT32 file system is readable both by Windows & OS X, but is not easily searchable and has a large file size limitation.

what's "macdrive" and how do i get it? also, if I use the FAT32 system is that the only downside?

**mystavros** · 01-02-2011, 07:53 AM

Originally Posted by macdrive007

If you use the NTFS file system, you need to install "NTFS-3G" in your Mac, as NTFS is not read by your Mac OOTB.

Read functionality is supported by default. Ntfs-3g is needed to have write functionality.

**shiro_ian** · 01-02-2011, 10:04 AM

Originally Posted by ingridients

what's "macdrive" and how do i get it? also, if I use the FAT32 system is that the only downside?

FAT32 is compatible with both Windows and Mac OS, but the biggest limitation is that you can only store files in it which are 4+gb size or less. Given that your HD has 1 TB capacity, I strongly recommend NOT to use FAT32. There's a strong possibility that the files you want to put in your HD will exceed the 4+gb limit (1080p mkv files, dual-layer ISOs, etc.)