# Reformatting an External HD to NTFS or FAT32



## ubuppdows (Jul 13, 2008)

Hi! Well this might be a sticky question...

Ah, for the record I'm running Tiger so you know what Disk Utility can convert to...

I purchased a new external HD. (make and model doesn't really matter... but it's a USB 2.0 Toshiba)

I partitioned it using disk utility and I chose HFS+ I was planning to keep one partition as HFS+ and the other NTFS (or FAT32 and convert it to NTFS in Windows). I've been reading EVERYWHERE about how to do this but I only get "use Disk Utility to reformat to FAT32) or it's some outdated PowerBook FAQ. I don't know HOW to reformat it to FAT32, exactly.

The difficulty arose when I connected my External to my Windows comp and it couldn't read both partitions (currently HFS+). I tried to reformat one partition to the HFS format and then UNIX in hopes that Windows could read it (and in extension, reformat it) but no dice.

So... is there a app for Mac that can reformat a hard drive to FAT32 (at least) or is there some program for Windows that can help me connect a HFS+ drive and then reformat it?

Thanks.


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## ferrija1 (Apr 11, 2006)

GParted can create and format partitions to FAT32.
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/


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## ubuppdows (Jul 13, 2008)

Okay, let me try this...


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## ubuppdows (Jul 13, 2008)

It doesn't work because my Windows computer isn't mounting the disk...


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## Serge_N_Gin (Sep 7, 2004)

You may need to do it from the Mac end of things. FWIW, in Disc Utility choose MS-DOS which is the same as FAT32.


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