How To Reformat Seagate Backup Plus For Mac

Best Answer: EDIT: I see at the Seagate site that they are offering the $19.95 Paragon HFS+ software free. See the first link below. Dj program for mac free. You use a Mac formatted drive with the Paragon software. Download the HFS4WIN.exe file at the link below.

However, for backup purposes, you want to create two partitions because you wont be able to use Time Machine on an ExFAT parition. If you are just looking to backup certain files, you can use a third party backup software to backup to an ExFAT drive. Seagate branded external drives come preformatted, some for PCs, some for Macs, and some of them have special utilities allowing them to Or, if you have a drive that is formatted for a different type of computer or a drive that is not preformatted, you will need to format the drive before you can use it.

Connect the drive you want to use to the Windows system. Double-click the HFS4WIN.exe file and install. When it finishes, restart. If you have any other drives you need to use, each drive you want to use with Windows requires a new installation of the HFS4WIN.exe software. NOTE: This software only makes sense if you will just use the drive with your Windows system, since it has to be installed in Windows.

If you need other options, read on. DO NOT format any large drive volume as FAT anything ever. You need NTFS or Mac OS Extended. If you will use the drive only with your own Windows system, you can format as Mac OS Extended, but you will need to install either MacDrive or TransMac in Windows. If you will use the drive with various Windows systems, use NTFS, and install 'NTFS For Mac' (link below) in OS X.

It enables write attribute for the Apple driver. Without it, you would only be able to copy files FROM the drive in OS X. With it, you can read from or write to (copy files to) the drive in OS X. Format matters: -- FAT-32 is read-write for all OSes, but is not recommended by Microsoft for large drive volumes. FAT file systems have the problem of cluster size increasing with volume size, so it becomes quite poor in performance on large drive volumes. That's why the Windows formatting software will chop a HDD into partitions of 32 GB each when formatting FAT.

-- exFAT suffers the same performance problem as FAT-32, except it allows use of large files (FAT-32 has 4 GB limit). -- 'Mac OS Extended' format is for OS X only and is the only format for Time Machine, but you can buy MacDrive or TransMac to use it with Windows. -- NTFS is the standard for Windows, but the Apple driver can only read from it (cannot save-copy-rename-move files on it or to it). Install NTFS-3G in OS 10.6.8 or earlier or Paragon NTFS For Mac in OS 10.7 or later to write files to it. -- HSFExplorer can enable Windows to see all files on a Mac format, and thus save a file from it.

The drive does not mount, so the process is similar to recovery software. Even more details are at the last link below ('Best Answer'), but that answer was given before it was known that the installer for 'NTFS-3G' could not be used in OS 10.7, so just use Pagaron's software with Lion. • Tell us some more • Upload in Progress • Upload failed. Please upload a file larger than 100x100 pixels • We are experiencing some problems, please try again. • You can only upload files of type PNG, JPG, or JPEG. • You can only upload files of type 3GP, 3GPP, MP4, MOV, AVI, MPG, MPEG, or RM.