I've got an external FireWire 160G drive. The original intent was to use it for backups of my TiBook, and for moving files around between Windows, linux and Mac OS X systems. So, the obvious solution would be creating one backup partition with HFS+, and the rest of the space leave for FAT32 as the most common standard. I did some searching on the Internet, but it doesn't look like there is full solution for this problem posted. So I did my own research and developed this procedure. To make it work, you need only OS X and Windows - no special software involved. The idea is to create partitions on the target Windows system, and then format them on OS X.
Standard precaution - you'll work as root in terminal app, so you must be very careful. You can ruin the whole file system with just one wrong command!
Using one external drive for mac & windows backups? On creating a 3rd partition to use as NAS. The exFAT file system is fully supported natively by both Windows and Mac OSX, so.
Read the rest of the hint for the process. Procedure:. Create two partitions in Windows (Windows2000 in my case), first for HFS+, second for FAT32. No need to format them. Connect drive to OS X. Befor switching drive on, run this command from terminal: ls /dev/rdisk?You'll get a list of current disks.
Switch on the external drive. If OS X pops up with a window about initing new drive, press Ignore.
Repeat the ls /dev/rdisk? Now you should see one more disk in the list. Remeber its number (i.e. Rdisk2, I'll use this one in the examples).
Type ls /dev/rdisk2. You should get rdisk2s1 and rdisk2s2 - first is first partition, second is second partition. Run the following command, but change HFSVOLUMENAME to something informative for you: newfshfs -v HFSVOLUMENAME /dev/rdisk2s1When it's done, you now have an HFS+ partition. Run this command: newfsmsdos -v FATVOLUMENAME -F 32 /dev/rdisk2s2Now you have a FAT32 partition.
It's not limited to only 32gb - I have 100gb, and it works at least with OS X 10.2.6. Powercycle the external drive. In my case, OS X picks up the FAT32 partition, but doesn't recognize HFS+ (what an irony). To mount the HFS+ partition (which will show the icon in the Finder), type this command: hdid /dev/disk2s1Pay attention - this time it's not rdisk2s1, but disk2s1. On Windows, go to the Disk Manager and assign some letter to the FAT32 drive.
W2K works fine with partitions over 32gb; it just doesn't want to create them.That's it! robg adds: I have not tested this one myself! Please heed the caution if you're going to try this one.
Using this method, would the HFS+ partition be bootable for OSX? For example, could I use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone an OSX boot disk to the HFS+ partition and be able to boot from it? Since it appears you have to type 'hdid /dev/disk2s1' via Terminal whenever you want to mount the partition, I would assume you could NOT boot from it (but if you could, you would be my hero). I've been looking for a way to boot OSX from one Firewire partition while having a Windows partition available for my work PC (without needing MacDrive or MacOpener). Can't help with that, sorry. The problem is in Open Firmware, it doesn't recognize MBR-kind (aka fdisk aka msdos aka windows type) partitions, so doesn't want to load BootX from it, even if file system there is HFS+. Yaboot might be able to load OS X from such partition, but I don't know how to make it work this way.
I'll try to figure out, though. So far I had created bootable CD with BootCD tool and keep it with me all the time, so in case of troubles I could boot from it and restore system from backup. I've done a bit more work trying to get this working correctly. I had thought I could create one large DOS partition, and then make a large HFS+ disk image in it to save my Mac files.
No dice though, since it appears there is a 5gb filesize limit on the msdos drive. (I get 'operation unsupported' errors in disk copy whenever I try to make an image that's larger.) I'd love any help anyone can provide with that piece. Also, there's a PC program called freefdisk you can get at which has no partition size limit. So, you can create both partitions, and specify the filesystem for the pc one, on the PC. Last, but not least, I'm not sure hdid is the best command to use to get your drive identitified. Every time I've used it, it created another /dev/rdisk?
(Shouldn't it use the /dev/rdisk?s? File that's already there?) And, when I go to eject the firewire drive, it says disk ' can't be ejected because its in use. (I assume its referring to the /dev/rdisk1s5 file that was ignored when hdid created the /dev/rdisk2.) The manpage for hdid says its intended for disk images, not actual disks.
Here's what I get with sudo autodiskmount -adv. There is a way to get both partitions working with mac os x, so you do not have to mount it manually - everything shows up automatically at connect the solution is to use pdisk, a earlier suggested in a comment. Caution: pdisk will not 'create' partitions but only write the partition table. It will tell the system where to look for the partition, but will not create an empty partition at the desired place. The partition is created afterwards by the command newfs. if you do not care for compatibility with os9 then follow step 1 to 5 in the initial guide. If you do care: partition the drive in os x disktool as one big drive.
Check the box for mac os 9 driver. Instead of using newfs now, you have to alter the partition table. (% represents the terminal.). unmount the drive (if mounted) in the finder or disktool with cmd-e or in the terminal with% disktool -e disk2 (whereas rdisk2 stands for your external drive, see initial guide).
write the new partitions into the table:% sudo pdisk this starts a program that prompts for input. enter L if you wish to display your drives and partitions.
Sorry guys, my idea is not working. The process described above does not contain any errors, but it does not provide you with a fat32 partition that windows will recognize. Obviously the way to store partitions is completely different in os x than in windows - or rather different in windows from all other systems. What seems interesting to me: i reformatted my hard disk (after i finished my process) with dos / fdisk.
I even formatted the partitions. And the astonishing thing is that in os x with pdisk still displays the partition map i had constructed before. So os x stores the partition map differently and even in a different place. The partition table used by Apple is not the same as the one used under Windows and all Unix flavors.
Iomega and others have tried to build 'mixed' partition tables (in particular for their 'Tools' Zips). Having a look at what is on the disk gives a perfect idea of the quality of the software they sell. Having a HFS/HFS+ partition and a FAT32 partition on the same disk relies necessarily on some hacks or on some holes offered by some utilities. I would not store my files on such a disk.
Pierre Duhem. I'll share what I've found out because I think it gives you the best possible solution for the problem. Possible that some of you know about this already but from my point of view, my method has not explicitly been described before and I feel it is a good summary of various details spread over many previous posts. Simply use diskutil to partition your extrnal FW drive!
No need for a Windoze machine to set this up. Check out the man page for diskutil, it describes pretty well what you need to know and even gives an example which is almost exactly what you want. The command line tool diskutil pretty much does what the well-known Disk Utility application does (duh.), except it also allows you to mix Apple (HFS+.) partitions with MS-DOS partitions on the same drive (you cannot do this with the Disk Utility). Basically what you want is sth like this: diskutil partitionDisk device numberOfPartitions MBRFormat Replace with the appropriate details for your HFS+ partition and with the appropriate details for the MS-DOS partion (or vice versa).
Keep in mind that the name for the DOS partition should be uppercase and less than 12 chars, otherwise the partition will not be assigned a name (but be created anyway). When thinking about the size: You can use abbreviations like 10G for 10 GByte (see man page). And you don't have to take out a calculator to determine how much space is left for your second partition (given the size of the first one): Simply use the desired size for the first partition and then give a number which exceeds the amount of space left for the second one - then automatically every little byte left will be used for the second partition. As for the device: Use the procedure described in the original post to find out which device to use (to find out the disk #).
Then use sth. Like /dev/disk2Check out the man page for details. Although you cannot repartition your boot up disk anyway, I think, be careful here and eject any other disks (such as iPods etc.) before using this command, just in case. As you know, there will be no confirmation question after entering the command and all data on the whole disk (all volumes) will be lost, so make sure you find out the appropriate disk # before typing in anything for fun. Using the parameter MBRFormat specifies that the partition table be written in such a way that Windoze machines can read it.
And here is what you get using the procedure described above: A partition which will be recognizable on Windoze machines AND Mac machines without problems and a HFS+ partition which will be recognized automatically on the Mac without any problems (no need to manually mount the volume after logging in as described in the original post, the volume will automatically be mounted upon log in and can be unmounted just like any other external volume in the Finder). HOWEVER, YOU CANNOT BOOT UP YOUR MAC FROM THE HFS+ PARTITION. As has been said before in previous posts: The way partition tables are stored on Win and Mac systems differs. (At the moment) you cannot have HFS+ and FAT32 (Windows) partitions on the same drive and boot up into the appropriate partition on BOTH systems.
See also Pierre Duhem's concerns expressed in a previous post above on this. So if you are REALLY concerned about your data you might want to not use the procedure described and instead stick with ONLY HFS+ or ONLY FAT32. However, I have not experienced any problems with the setup described above (apart from the fact that I cannot boot off the partition which is not so relevant for me anyway and which I don't consider a problem now that i know about it). But can't guarantee total functionality, of course. Insert 'Batteries not included, only valid where not prohibited' and your other favorite legal warnings here.
As I said, the Finder can perfectly handle the HFS+ volume created in the above manner. It's the Mac's open firmware that does not allow booting with the created HFS+ partition (because it does not like the partition table in MBRFormat).
It took me quite a few tries to find out the details on this. For instance, I created a separate HFS+ partition onto which I cloned my whole internal boot up hard drive (via Carbon Copy Cloner). In System Preferences under Startup Disk you can then also select the cloned system for the next start up, BUT IT WILL NOT WORK. Apparrently, the open firmware does not like it (the external FW drive is not detectable at start up (press the option key when switching your Mac on to select the start up drive and the FW drive won't show up) but System Preferences does not know this and would let you choose the FW drive for start up although it will not work. On the other hand, by not using the parameter MBRFormat, which you might think would be worth a try, you would end up with a FAT32 (MS-DOS) partition which can be handled perfectly on your Mac but won't be recognized by Windoze which makes the whole thing pretty much pointless. So Win machines can only handle MBRFormat type partition tables.
So whichever way you turn it: Both Mac and Win systems don't really like each other's partition tables (or mixtures thereof) - however, the Mac is a bit more flexible here, as usual.:-) So decide for yourself if the pros or cons of this method overweigh. (I decided to go for it.) BTW: Am using Mac OS X (10.3.2), if this is of any relevance.
Trying to create 3 partitions, I hit a small snag (probably user error). Not working for me. I followed silentaccord's instructions, and everything stops at step 5: '5) Now use fdisk to create the master boot record (MBR) so Windows will recognize the FAT32 partition: fdisk -e /dev/disk4' disk4 is the disk I'm working with On my machine, fdisk tells me '/dev/disk4 is not a character device or a regular file' and pdisk tells me 'can't open file 'disk4' (No such file or directory)'.
I have fdisk(8), and I'm running OSX 10.3.9. Can't understand why Disk Utility can tell me that, yes, disk4 is mounted, but it can mount/unmount it, but fdisk swears there's no such disk4. I can use diskutil to mountDisk, too. What do think's wrong? Did I miss something? - - osxpounder. I worked past my fdisk error: turns out I must specify the disk name differently.
Although 'disk4' is what Disk Utility identifies as this disk, I had to use 'fdisk -e /dev/rdisk4'. So I managed to use fdisk to make the partitions, one HFS+ and one FAT32, then attached the external drive to a WinXp box. It recognized an unformatted volume, and let me format it in this case, to 64GB. Now, on the Mac, the FAT32 volume won't mount. Disk Utility calls it 'disk5s5', even in the graphic interface's left pane.
I tried ejecting the disk and remounting. Tried just ejecting the Mac volume, which mounts every time I attach the disk, but 'disk5s5' still won't mount. Tried ejecting just the Mac volume. Tried using the buttons in DU to mount the disk5s5 volume. Nope and nope.
So I tried using the CLI and diskutil. Diskutil reports that disk5s5 is mounted, but. It doesn't show up in Finder.
If I click 'Verify Disk' in DU's GUI with disk5s5 selected greyed, not mounted, even though diskutil says it's mounted, I get: Verifying volume 'disk5s5' BAD SUPER BLOCK: MAGIC NUMBER WRONG. /dev/rdisk5s5 (NO WRITE) LOOK FOR ALTERNATE SUPERBLOCKS? No 1 volume checked 1 non HFS volume checked Now I'm really stuck, but I'm going to keep plugging at this. - osxpounder.
Yes, I think the OS is relevant. I have tried this in OS X 10.2.8 but it seems the kernel does not recognize the MBRFormat command. From the diskutil man page it is not clear to me when this command was introduced, however.in case I am doing something wrong, my tried commands in terminal are: diskutil partitionDisk disk1 2 MBRFormat Hfs+ Test 10G MS-DOS TESTWIN 30G If I get rid of the MBRFormat it works fine. I also tried to add ' OS9Drivers MBRFormat' rather than MBRFormat by itself but that fails also. Error is: There are not enough parameters for the amount of partitions you specified (something to that effect). You are right, the OS version probably matters indeed. In fact, it appears quite obvious to me now that diskutil must have changed considerably from any previous version to that in 10.3.X because in 10.3.X it now also handles the sparse image files that FileVault uses (whcih is a major enhancement).
(The man page for diskutil in 10.3.2 gives 24 Jan 2004 as the date.) I don't have a machine with anything before 10.3.2 on it to test, but my guess is that full support for MBRFormat has indeed been included only in the 10.3 version. As laid out in previous posts, implementing sth that handles MBRFormat correctly must be quite difficult which could be a reason that it was fully implemented only in 10.3. BTW, when considering switching to 10.3, make sure you update to the most recent version because the changes made to the FileVault features after the initial release of 10.3 most likey also affected diskutil. There is a way to have Dos (FAT32) and Mac (HFS+) partitions on the same BOOTABLE firewire disk.
Warning: Its a hack,but I managed to do that on a Keyplug 80Go Firewire/USB hard disk and it work smoothly: I'm able to boot on it from an iBook G4, and the dos partition is usable on every PC i tried. The idea is simple. Mac and Dos partition tables use the same area of the disk: the 1st block for DOS, several blocks starting from the 1st for MAC. But they dont use the same bytes on the 1st sector. For more details there is a clear a complete book: 'File System Forensic Analysis' from Brian Carrier (see this chapter So you can make an hybrid 1st sector that Mac recognize as an apple partition table (and YES can boot on any bootable HFS partition) and PC recognize as a DOS partition table. To do it under MacOs 10.3: 1) find the device associed with your disk (see above) for me it was /dev/disk1 and unmount it 2) make an apple partition table and format each partition with diskutil: diskutil partitionDisk disk1 3 MS-DOS LaPoche 4B MS-DOS Pingouin 0B HFS+ SECOURS 0B this make 2 dos partitions and 1 apple partition.
I tried your procedure and had a few problems. In step 2), the output I get from 'diskutil list /dev/disk1' is nothing like your example. I just ignored it and continued. In step 6), can you be specific about what commands you used to create the DOS partition table? Since I'm not familiar with fdisk, I used 'diskutil partitionDisk' with the MBRFormat argument.
Is this acceptable? In step 10), I can't seem to write back to the partition table: dd: /dev/rdisk1: Invalid argument 0+1 records in 0+0 records out 0 bytes transferred in 0.002190 secs (0 bytes/sec). I don't have a Wintel machine to test it on at the moment, but I think I got this working. The partition table shows up in both pdisk and fdisk and both partitions (I created an HFS+ and a FAT32) show up on my Mac. I'm guessing that diskutil with MBRFormat should be okay, but I did use fdisk.
It's pretty easy if you just use the 'help' and '?' My disk gave the same 'Invalid Argument' complaint. I found that after fdisking, it had changed from /dev/rdisk1 to /dev/rdisk2 - strange. Also, even when I put in the correct disk number, I still got 'Invalid Argument,' except this time, the drives remounted and the write light on the drive flashed. I set up a 120GB disk on Oxford 911 chipset as well laid out by anonymous but encountered a few difficulties later on. 1) The HFS+ partition used to show up in disk utility, ready to be mounted.
However, terminal must now be used to mount the partition each and every time the drive is attached.2) Is it just me or does this cause a significant slowdown in the transfer rate of data now that there's now more than just HFS+ partitions?For me, things have seemed to slow down considerably when transferring files etc. To and from the external. 3) I would love to find out how to adjust the spin down/sleep time for this drive separate from my internal. It hurts to wake this drive up so often. Hi, I have a 60G external drive(firewire/USB) which I want to fromat as FAT32 because I want to use it on a mac os X machine also. Is there any size limit on the size of a FAt32 partition?
I tried to format it in Windows XP,both from command prompt(using 'format' command) and Xp utility in Control panel.None of them worked.ON the command prompt I got message that the volume size is too big for FAT32 and there was no option for Fat32 in the XP utility(DiskManagement). Any clues on how I can do this? Also,I had to format as NTFS,assign the drive with a letter and then try FAT32 from command prompt,but it did not work.Thanks for any suggestions!! In step 2), the output I get from 'diskutil list /dev/disk1' is nothing like your example. I just ignored it and continued. You should type 'diskutil disk1', not 'diskutil list /dev/disk1' In step 6), can you be specific about what commands you used to create the DOS partition table? Since I'm not familiar with fdisk, I used 'diskutil partitionDisk' with the MBRFormat argument.
Is this acceptable? You cannot use 'diskutil partitionDisk' because it formats every partition and destroy the partition table you made in step 2).
You have to use fdisk. Fdisk is not a friendly tool but it can do the job. Use 'man fdisk' and go ahead!A few hints:.
you should use a raw device (in my example 'fdisk -e /dev/rdisk1'). after that, use 'print' to see the partition table. 'edit 1' for the first entry. 'edit 2' for the second and so on. USE EXACTLY THE SAME PARTITION OFFSET and PARTITION SIZE as IN THE APPLE PARTITION TABLE.
'quit' to save and exit. if you panic ctrl-C works fine!. if you are more comfortable with a Linux partition tool (cfdisk, parted, fdisk.) you can try them.
Any tool that write ONLY THE FIRST BLOCK is OK. In step 10), I can't seem to write back to the partition table:dd: /dev/rdisk1: Invalid argument0+1 records in0+0 records out0 bytes transferred in 0.002190 secs (0 bytes/sec) It works fine, maybe a typing error or you forgot to unmount the disk. Thanks to simoncha, I was finally able to create FAT32 and bootable Mac partitions on the same disk. I'm posting my process in detail so others will know how. I was able to simplify some things and I had to guess with some of the steps so if anyone sees something that should have been done differently, let me know. So far, everything seems to work fine.
I included the results of some compatibility testing at the end. The following steps should work in 10.3. 1) Determine the device (e.g. /dev/disk1) associated with your disk. I will be using disk1 and rdisk1 in my examples. You can use steps 2 through 4 in the original hint to find the correct number for your disk.
Unmount any partitions that are already on the disk (ejecting from Finder is sufficient). These partitions will be deleted. 2) I made two new partitions, one 18GB Mac (HFS+) called 'Mac' and one 10G FAT32 (MS-DOS) called 'PC': diskutil partitionDisk disk1 2 HFS+ Mac 18G MS-DOS PC 10G3) Unmount the newly created partitions (eject from Finder).
4) Get the partition information. You can use the command pdisk in Terminal. Enter l (lower case L) to list a device's partition map and then /dev/disk1. Then q to quit pdisk. Here's what mine looked like: /dev/disk3 map block size=512 #: type name length base ( size ) 1: Applepartitionmap Apple 63 @ 1 2: AppleFree 0+@ 64 3: AppleHFS AppleHFSUntitled2 37486592 @ 262208 ( 17.9G) 4: DOSFAT32 DOSFAT32Untitled3 20856304 @ 37748800 ( 9.9G) 5: AppleFree 0+@ 586051045) Now use fdisk to create the master boot record (MBR) so Windows will recognize the FAT32 partition: fdisk -e /dev/rdisk1When prompted to initialize the partition table, enter y.
Fdisk doesn't actually create any partitions. It just edits the MBR partition table. That's what the information from pdisk is for. The MBR created by fdisk can only contain information about four partitions. The important ones to enter are the Apple partition map and the HFS+ and FAT32 partitions.
This means that in step 2, you can create a total of three partitions. The commands for the two partitions I created are: edit 1 partition id: af (I wasn't sure what partition id to use for the Apple partition map so I just used HFS+) edit in CHS mode? N partition offset: 1 (This is the value in the base column for the Apple partition map in the output from pdisk.) partition size: 63 (from the length column for the partition map) edit 2 partition id: af (for HFS+) edit in CHS mode? N partition offset: 262208 (from the base column for the HFS partition in the output from pdisk) partition size: 37486592 (from the length column for the HFS partition) edit 3 partition id: c (for Win95 FAT32L) edit in CHS mode? In OS 10.2, the 'diskutil' command does not support the important parameter 'MBRFormat' meanwhile the 'fdisk' command does not work with external drive as described in OS 10.3 with the option '-e'.
Therefore, the previous posts said their method only work with OS 10.3. Here is my solution, upgrade the 'fdisk' command from the opensource project at apple.com. Here is the link for open source project 1. From the above link, click the link 'diskdevcmds-277.4' 2.
From the link, click the link 'fdisk.tproj' 3. From the link, download the files in the link. Type 'make' in the directory containing the downloaded files 5.
Optional You may backup the file 'fdisk' in the directory '/usr/sbin' 6. Type 'make install', the new 'fdisk' command is ready.:-) Note that the 'make install' command statement should be run as the 'root' user. I'm a bit late in replying here, but i just faced the same problem. I used silentaccord's method for setting up a firewire drive with two partitions: hfs+ and fat32. Then i plugged it into a windows xp box and reformatted the fat32 partition as ntfs. This worked perfectly in windows, but the mac wouldn't recognize the drive.
The problem, as you were guessing is that the apple partition map still think it's fat32, so it doesn't line up properly. To fix this, i unmounted the drive and used sudo pdisk. First use e (edit device's map) and your particular drive. Then use p (print the partition table) to get the current setup. The partition that has been reformatted to ntfs should be listed as type: DOSFAT32.
Use t (change a partition's type) and enter the appropriate partition number. It took me a while to find this part, but the correct type should be WindowsNTFS. Next use w (write the partition table) and q followed by q again to quit out of pdisk.
The drive should automount now. I gave it a shot though and it keeps saying it can't write to the partition map when I give the 'w' command. Not sure why, made to sure unmount it and tried many times. This is a 10.3.8 machine. Last login: Wed Dec 31 17:40:00 on ttyp1Welcome to Darwin!Put-Workstation-ID-Here-X38-GM: schooladmin$ sudo pdiskPassword:Top level command (? For help): eName of device: /dev/rdisk1/dev/rdisk1Command (?
For help): p/dev/rdisk1 map block size=512 #: type name length base ( size ) 1: Applepartitionmap Apple 63 @ 1 2: AppleFree 0+@ 64 3: AppleHFS AppleHFSUntitled2 83623936 @ 262208 ( 39.9G) 4: DOSFAT32 DOSFAT32Untitled3 72481856 @ 83886144 ( 34.6G) 5: AppleFree 0+@ 156368000Device block size=512, Number of Blocks=156368016DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0Command (? For help): tPartition number: 4New partition type: WindowsNTFSCommand (?
For help): w The map has not been changed.Command (? For help): qTop level command (?
For help): qThe endPut-Workstation-ID-Here-X38-GM: schooladmin$. I too wanted NTFS and HFS+ on my external HD. Here's my situation: I have a 200GB external HD that I wanted to use to back up both my laptop (Powerbook) and desktop (Windows XP PC). The PC is formatted NTFS, the laptop is HFS+, and I had 20GB spare (200GB - 120GB PC - 60GB laptop = 20GB spare) on the external that I wanted to partition as FAT32 for common access. I followed the instructions above (tiger, 10.4.3) and it all worked fine.
Then I mounted the drive in Windows and reformatted my 120GB partition into NTFS. As you said I can no longer see the NTFS volume from OS X (or at least it doesn't automount) nor do I see the HFS+ volume in Windows. For me though this was no issue.
Since the NTFS and HFS+ volumes are for backup only, I only need access to the appropriate volume on the appropriate platform, which happens. The FAT32 volume shows up on both platforms. This way, in fact, is even a little cleaner since connecting the drive to either computer will now only automount the appropriate 2 volumes! Maybe this wasn't working for you though since you needed to access your NTFS volume on OS X (but read-only?
OS X cannot natively write to NTFS volumes) Should I be wary of any other effects I may have incurred by switching from FAT32 to NTFS in Windows? I'm worried about bootability. My current external hard disk is (was) USB, but since I learned here that OS X needs Firewire to boot from, I have since returned my HD and will get a firewire one instead. If I follow these same procedures AND reformat the big FAT32 into NTFS in windows, will I have trouble making a bootable HFS+ clone of my current PB disk?
Thanks for the tip- this one was great! Now I need to go back and better understand the logic behind it all hehe. I have a problem.
When I try to follow silentaccord's instructions on OS X 10.4.8, I run into this: $ diskutil partitionDisk disk1 3 HFS+ Mac 125G MS-DOS Win 75G MS-DOS Common 32.6G Started partitioning on disk disk1 Creating Partition Map 5%.Formatting Disk 10%.Formatting Disk 32%.Formatting Disk 100%. Finished partitioning on disk disk1 /dev/disk1 #: type name size identifier 0: GUIDpartitionscheme.232.9 GB disk1 1: EFI 200.0 MB disk1s1 2: AppleHFS Mac 124.9 GB disk1s2 3: Microsoft Basic Data WIN 75.0 GB disk1s3 4: Microsoft Basic Data COMMON 32.7 GB disk1s4 What went wrong? It makes an EFI partition (I'm running Intel Macbook) without me telling it to, and partition #0 is a different name than what the instructions point out. On top of that, when I try to run pdisk this is what happens: $ pdisk Top level command (? For help): l Name of device: /dev/disk1 pdisk: No valid block 1 on '/dev/disk1' Somebody please help me! It's been awhile since you asked so I hope you figured it out. I'll post what I know in case anyone else with an Intel Mac has trouble.
All you should have to do are steps 1 and 2 from my previous post. The default setting on Intel Macs when using the diskutil partitionDisk command is to create a GUID partition table (aka GPT). The FAT32 partition created this way should be recognized by Windows without having to create a master boot record. I was able to successfully reformat the FAT32 partition as NTFS from Windows (I'm not sure why you had trouble; maybe Partition Magic just doesn't like the GPT).
The NTFS partition can then be mounted on the Mac but as always, it's read-only. Macs running OS X 10.3 or 10.4 can read and write to the HFS+ and FAT32 partitions but only Intel Macs will be able to boot from the HFS+ partition because of the GPT. OS X 10.2 seems to read both partitions fine but locks up when trying to write. OS 9 won't recognize the disk at all. It's still possible to do the old method with an Apple partition map on Intel Macs. You just have to add APMFormat to the command in step 2: diskutil partitionDisk disk1 2 APMFormat HFS+ Mac 18G MS-DOS PC 10GThe rest of the instructions remain the same except that I had to sudo the pdisk and fdisk commands. The advantage of doing it this way is that the HFS+ partition(s) will be bootable for PowerPC and Intel Macs (although an Intel system must be cloned to the drive since the Intel installer doesn't like APM disks).
This method also retains OS 9 and OS X 10.2 compatibility. Three years down the line, this still works great.
Couple notes: in step 2: diskutil partitionDisk took disk1 as the device name, though the device name I got from the ls (original post's step 2) was /dev/rdisk1 (maybe I'd have known that right off if I was a more seasoned terminal user?) in step 3: ejecting from the finder (at least with the usb drive I used, but I assume with firewire too) will eject the disks, leaving pdisk and fdisk nothing to run on. Use disk utility to unmount the partitions you're working on in step 4, that's pdisk -l not pdisk l (there's a dash before the lowercase L).
I think I was able to reproduce the problem. It seems that when there are two HFS+ partitions and the MBR has been created, the OS X installer only recognizes the first one as a bootable partition. It's nothing new in Tiger-just something I failed to notice earlier.
I'm still not sure why greigd had this problem with both HFS+ partitions. Even though the installer says the second partition isn't bootable, I was able to clone a working system to it using the restore tab in Disk Utility. I also noticed that Disk Utility won't erase this second HFS+ partition. I'm not sure what the issue is but I'd recommend just one HFS+ partition to be safe. I was using my external firewire drive formatted according to these instructions with 10.2, and I just upgraded to 10.4 (Tiger). To my surprise, the HFS+ partition seems to have vanished! When I type 'hdid /dev/disk1s1' the response is 'hdid: attach failed - not recognized'.
Disk Utility thinks that the HFS+ partition is formatted with FAT16, and when I verify the partition it says 'Invalid BSjmpBoot in boot block: 000000' and recommends repair. When I look at the disk under Windows with Disk Management, it thinks the space is unformatted! Any diagnostic ideas you can provide would be greatly appreciated as I need the files on this disk. I have absolutely ZERO knowledge of the UNIX command line, but I followed Silentaccord's instructions and it WORKED! They were very well written, and I was not confused for one minute.except at the end. In the post, it said after you finish the edit commands in fdisk, you can 'verify what you've entered using the print command.
After that, you can use the write command to write to the partition table. However, when I use the print command, it mounted the disks, causing the following error: fdisk: /dev/rdisk1: Device busyThis would throw me out of fdisk, and while the Mac could read the disks fine, Windows XP saw it as unformatted. I slowed down, got some lunch, and when I came back, I started the process again, but this time I didn't type print. I went straight to write and everything worked PERFECTLY. I now have a 100GB FAT32 partition for Win/Mac and a 60GB HFS+ partion exclusively for my iBook. Thanks everyone on a thorough, well documented thread!
- 12' iBook G4 (1.0GHz) 1.25 GB DDR266 SDRAM Mac OS X Panther 10.3.9. This method indeed seems to fail on Tiger, the HFS partition doesn't mount and isn't even recognized in Disk Utility. However, I have tried a slightly different strategy (in 10.4.6) which produces not just a working Mac partition, but also one that mounts automatically! I started out in the same way as the article described, i.e. Partition in Windows (2 primary partitions), and create the FAT partition in the terminal (I put the FAT partition first, I don't know if this matters).
After the failed attempt to create a working HFS partition in the terminal, I simply fired up Disk Utility, selected the second partition, and chose 'Erase' with as disk type 'OS X journaled'.
You can format your external hard drive from either the PC or Mac. Just keep in mind if you want to use your drive also for OS X’s Time Machine backups, we advise you to format your drive through Mac because there is an additional step to make drive compatible with “Time Machine Backups”. And you can only do this with exFAT as with FAT32 Mac OS X’s Time Machine backup won’t work. FAT32 or exFAT? You can format your external hard drive in both – exFAT and FAT32.
They both will work just fine. Mac and PC can read and write on both. However, each of these filesystems has their own pros and cons. FAT32 has a maximum 4GB file size limit, but exFAT can work with files as large as 16EB, that’s more than you will ever need. If you have to work with large video clips, games or any other kind of massive files, FAT32 may not be the best choice. Many still choose FAT32 over exFAT despite its slower performance, as it’s also compatible with Linux Os and is supported on many consoles.
Once you have done with formatting, your external hard drive will be able to write and read files from both a PC and Mac. The resulting FAT32 file system will be compatible with all versions of Mac OS X, and Windows including back to 95. This is one of the most widely recognized file system formats. FAT32 – a file system normally used on USB disks.
exFAT – a newer file system optimized for flash devices and has improved performance overFAT32 Why I can’t use NTFS on Mac? The default file system for Windows is NTFS (New Technology File System). Macs that run Snow Leopard or Lion can read data from drives that are formatted as NTFS.
However, they can’t write. To make your Mac compatible writing on NTFS you have to get and install a third-party driver. So in the end, it’s possible to make your NTFS external hard drive compatible with Mac. But we advise to just format it to “FAT” file system as it’s less time consuming and easier. Windows 7 can’t read nor write files to external drives that are formatted as HFS. To do so you also have to install third-party like. How to format an External Drive in Windows 1) Connect the drive to your Windows PC.
2) Open Disk Management. 3) Right click on unallocated or any other disk partition and select “ New Simple Volume” 4) Choose your desired size 5) Assign your external hard drive with any letter. 6) Choose exFAT as the file system. 7) Follow the instructions and at the end click “ Finish“ How to Format an External Drive in OS X 1) Connect your external hard drive to the Mac. 2) Open Disk Utility. You can do this quickly by pressing CMD and the spacebar at the same time. Then type in “Disk Utility”. 3) Select the drive you want to format.
4) Click the Partition tab. 6) Change the Partition Layout from Current to 1 Partition. 7) Click Options, Select Master Boot Record, and click OK. 8) Name the hard drive with a name of your choice. 9) Click the Format drop-down menu.
10) Select exFAT or MS-DOS FAT(FAT32). 11) At last press Apply, then click on Partition. WD My Book would be best for desktop, Seagate Backup Plus Slim would be one of the best portable hard drives.
Both are all-around decent drives and will do fine for any backup, pictures included. As for cross-platform encryption, if you intend to use the same drive on both Mac and Windows, the best option would be using a cross-platform compatible encryption tool, like, while formatting the drive in exFAT to avoid compatibility issues. This is because Windows won’t recognize Mac’s native encryption and vice versa. VeraCrypt is well-renowned, so it should function well without any problems, just be prepared to learn how to use the tool. Try testing this setup with just a couple files before you perform entire backups.