I had been using an external hard drive to back up my macbook.  I recently purchased a new hard drive, and no longer need my old external hard drive and would like to format it for use with a PC.  How do I do this, as I can't get any PC's to recognize the drive, likely because it's FORMATED in MAC OS (extended).  I TRIED formatting it using my parallels side, but the virtual machine wouldn't recognize the drive either.

Thanks a lot.Hello, if I may clarify:
You are trying to format the drive using XP on a Virtual Machine?
I think you will find that this operation might not be possible.

(Translated: Mac is evil, evil, evil, evil, evil, evil)

"I recently purchased a new hard drive"
Do you mean a new hard drive, or a new COMPUTER? (sorry if it sounds like a stupid question, but a lot of users here get their terminology wrong)

What operating system is the PC using?
If you have Vista:
Click Start> Control Panel> Maitenence> Under "Administrative Tools" find "Create and Format Hard Disk Partitions" and click it
Find your USB drive, and format it. Hi,
I am trying to format the HD using the Mac side.  The only options available include Mac formats, and MS-DOS and UNIX.  Would MS-DOS even be an acceptable format for a PC running Windows XP?  I would LOVE to format it using my windows VM, but it does not recognize the drive.

Thanks Quote from: Atlas on September 19, 2007, 09:42:50 PM

Hi,
I am trying to format the HD using the Mac side.  The only options available include Mac formats, and MS-DOS and UNIX.  Would MS-DOS even be an acceptable format for a PC running Windows XP?  I would love to format it using my windows VM, but it does not recognize the drive.

Thanks