External HD Question

[JustinSane]

My friend has an external HD that he got from a friend to use to backup stuff on his PC. He plugged it into his PC and it's not showing up in My Computer. He went to Disk Management and it shows up under that. Could it not be showing up in My Computer because it was formatted for Macs? I'm not really sure how that works.

[sondo2121]

Check to see if it was formatted as GUID (on the Mac). If it is, then you should reformat it as MBR (in disk utility on the Mac)

Disk Utility >> Click on the Hard drive (not the partitions) >> Click on options
-- Then you can choose the partition options.

http://www.sondo2121.com/diskutil.png

Then you'll be able to put it back in to your PC and it will show up in Disk Management and or My Computer.

I have had this exact same thing happen to me and this did the trick.

You'll be able to use MBR on the Mac and PC (assuming you don't format it as NTFS), but you won't be able to boot off of it on the Mac since it is MBR and not GUID.

Let me know if this helps.

[zandor]

I haven't messed with this with an external drive, but with internal hard drives partitions that aren't a type recognized by Windows simply don't show up in My Computer. I have to assume external hard drives are treated the same way, and if that's the case a drive with nothing but Mac (presumably HFS+) partitions just won't show up.
Unless his friend wants it back with whatever's on it intact, just repartition it in Disk Management and format the new Windows partition.

[sondo2121]

I haven't messed with this with an external drive, but with internal hard drives partitions that aren't a type recognized by Windows simply don't show up in My Computer. I have to assume external hard drives are treated the same way, and if that's the case a drive with nothing but Mac (presumably HFS+) partitions just won't show up.
Unless his friend wants it back with whatever's on it intact, just repartition it in Disk Management and format the new Windows partition.


Yes, watch to see what partition type it is under the mac....if your friend doesn't care or want the existing data on it, just make it MBR like I said earlier and format it as NTFS or FAT32...

[JustinSane]

Check to see if it was formatted as GUID (on the Mac). If it is, then you should reformat it as MBR (in disk utility on the Mac)

Disk Utility >> Click on the Hard drive (not the partitions) >> Click on options
-- Then you can choose the partition options.

snip

Then you'll be able to put it back in to your PC and it will show up in Disk Management and or My Computer.

I have had this exact same thing happen to me and this did the trick.

You'll be able to use MBR on the Mac and PC (assuming you don't format it as NTFS), but you won't be able to boot off of it on the Mac since it is MBR and not GUID.

Let me know if this helps.

Awesome, thank you I'll pass this along.