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I formatted my lacie hard drive with file system GPT and now want to use it as system drive but windows will not intall on GPT. i have tried several means to convert it to NTFS but all to no avail.
I need the lacie setup assistant urgently to reformat it wit NTFS. can you please help me with it.
my email is [email protected]
Thank you.
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The most likely reason you cannot see your hard drive on your
Windows computer but can on your Mac, is that the drive has been formatted for
GPT which is only supported on Windows Vista or 7 or above, not on XP.
Hello,
did you use your drive with a PC too?
What you describe is commonly linked to a drive formatted as NTFS (a windows partition format) which is read only on a plain MAC system. There are add ons you can install on your MAC to make NTFS writable. I can direct you to one if you need.
Another possibility is that your drive is formatted as MS-Dos (FAT32) which is read and write enabled for both PC and MAC, but it has the negative aspect of limiting file size to 4GB. So in your case, maybe your movie files are larger then 4GB and your drive is formatted Fat 32.
To verify the format of the drive, go to DIsk utility, select the LaCie drive and read the information that shows at the bottom of the Disk Utility window.
Regards,
Thank you for asking your question with FixYa Support.
I am not sure what type of computer you have that your LaCie is connected to, but first and foremost, make sure the external hard drive has been properly formatted to work with the operating system your computer has. For Windows computers: the LaCie should be formatted in either FAT32 or NTFS (recommended- more secure). How to Format a HD in Windows Vista For Mac computers: the LaCie should be formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format. How to format an external hard drive in Mac OS X
----------------------------------------------------------------------------- If your LaCie is already formatted, then the best way to import your entire iTunes library from the internal hard drive of your computer into the LaCie, especially if you are unable to drag and drop the library into you LaCie, is to try a simple copy and pasting of the ENTIRE iTunes folder from its home on your computer to the LaCie hard drive.
You can also use the website I like to reference which provides some good alternatives to effectively migrating your iTunes Library from a PC or Mac to your external hard drive:
For sake of space, I want you to review this article, because I not only agree with its content, it is exactly what I would explain to you as well in a more condensed, easy to follow fashion.
I hope I have helped guide you well on your question.
yes .... mac file system is different from a pc. i'd suggest ntfs as the choice of file system to format it. i believe that is the default choice with vista
That's because your Mac was using a file system called HFSX. Windows uses NTFS. They won't be able to talk to each other without some sort of emulation. Check out http://hem.bredband.net/catacombae/hfsx.html for a free/open source app that you can install on your Windows machine that will read the data on the Mac-formatted drive. If you are just trying to get the drive to work and don't care about the data, right click on it from Windows Explorer, select "Format", then make sure you set it to use the NTFS file system.
This way it should work... Connect your drive to the computer... Go to: Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer management. A new window will appear... Select Storage > Disk management on the left of the window. Now you will see the different drives that are connected or part of your system. One of the drives listed there is your LaCie, i think you'll recognize it by name... Right-click on it, and select 'format' In the new window, select the new volume label (as you like it), the file system (use NTFS), and set allocation unit size to default. Make sure 'Perform a quick format' is not checked...
Then click OK. Your drive will be formatted now... Don't interrupt the process
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