FreeAgent Products

[Kitch]

Our FreeAgent Desktop 500 GB was purchased for us.  I hooked it up to my PC and backed up files no problem.  I then hooked it up to our MAC and it could see the drive but would not allow me to access it.  I realized that I need my MAC data backed up more than my PC. 

I "accidentially" formatted this for our MAC and would like to put it back as NTFS.  I was then told by our "tech" person that I can use it for both MAC and PC.   When I called tech support they said they would help me partition but they would no longer support it after I did this.  And they also mentioned that partitioning the drive will make it unstable.

Any advice.  Please help!  Please help me find the software/link to do this. Thanks.

[Azork]

Hello,

if you want to use the drive with Windows/Mac, you will need to reformat the drive with FAT32 File system.

Connect the drive with you Mac and use Disk utility (Choose Erase and select MS-DOS file system from the list).

[cwickstrom]

I don't know why Seagate doesn't want us to use FAT32, but doing as Azork suggested works great. 

Just find the disk utility on the Mac (I imagine you could use FDISK on a Windows machine - if it still exists) and reformat the drive as a FAT32 drive.  Then you can share between Mac and Windows.  I expect that the performance may be a bit slower, but probably not enough so that you will notice.

I think the disk utility is in the utility folder of the applications folder.

Have fun!

[Azork]

unfortunately, Windows xp will allow you to format 32GB maximum in fat32
the best way to format the full size of the drive with Windows, it's to use our free tool "Discwizard" available here:

it will allow you to format the full size in fat32 with Windows...


(Edited long URL into hyperlink)


Message Edited by AlanM on 01-30-2008 07:52 AM

[benlewist]

Ok as somone has already mentioned the best way is to install MacDrive 7.0 onto your Windows machine.

So format your external drive to the HFSJ file format that is used by Macs on your Mac machine.

Now once MacDrive is installed onto your Windows machine you'll be able to treat the external hard drive as any windows NFTS formatted drive.

It's worked a treat for me between my windows desktop and macbook. And a little extra hint, there is a free trial of MacDrive on the link that someone has posted on here but only lasts a week until you need to purchase it. Although if you're clever there are a couple of cracks floating about that will help you with that.

[ali_gili]

hi

but I have used DiskWizard and format the Freeagent desk 1tb to fat32. but still the device(starsat x95usb) dosent recognize it.

could u help me?