Hard-drive formatting: 2 for 1

[mechana2015]

Hey all, I just got a new setup to back up files for our family (parents are obsessed with floppies) consisting of a USB case and an 80G hard drive.

What I now need is a way to partition the drive into two parts, one at 10G for them to back up their files, and the rest for me. The issue is that the 10G partition needs to be Windows compatable (shows up in avaliable storage), and the rest needs to be Mac compatable (shows up as a drive on my laptop). Probaly going to be using Win 98 for the Windows side of things and Mac OSX for mac side of things. I am basically wondering how this could be done, preferably through the Mac if possible.

Any tricks, tips, goarounds or hints would be helpful... full tutorials would be nice, but I don't expect any (dont feel obligatied)... free solutions would be best (eg. they cost me nothing but time to implement).

[Sync]

fat32 will be your solution, and staying under 80GB per partition is perfect as any higher is apparently unstable on OSX. Before moving tons of stuff over of course test it out with a few small files to see if both partitions can be read properly on both machines.

[shooraijin]

Sync, there is no such restriction with that on the Mac.

mechana, just plug the USB drive into the Mac and start Disk Utility. Partition it into 10GB and make the rest another partition, then format the first partition as FAT32, and the second partition as HFS+. Note that this configuration is probably not bootable on either operating system. One problem is making sure that Windows doesn't try to be smart and offer your parents the chance to format the second partition, which would make you sad. You should test it on both computers afterwards for any gotchas.

If you format them both FAT, then neither computer will complain, but Mac resource forks and the like are better handled under HFS+.

(EDIT: I should mention some code words in Disk Utility, depending on your version of OS X. "Mac OS Extended" = HFS+. Use (Journaled) if it offers it to you. "MS-DOS" = FAT32. Also, look at this how-to if you're comfortable in the Terminal: http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~pcarbo/macnexstar.html )

[mechana2015]

Sync, there is no such restriction with that on the Mac.

mechana, just plug the USB drive into the Mac and start Disk Utility. Partition it into 10GB and make the rest another partition, then format the first partition as FAT32, and the second partition as HFS+. Note that this configuration is probably not bootable on either operating system. One problem is making sure that Windows doesn't try to be smart and offer your parents the chance to format the second partition, which would make you sad. You should test it on both computers afterwards for any gotchas.

If you format them both FAT, then neither computer will complain, but Mac resource forks and the like are better handled under HFS+.

(EDIT: I should mention some code words in Disk Utility, depending on your version of OS X. "Mac OS Extended" = HFS+. Use (Journaled) if it offers it to you. "MS-DOS" = FAT32. Also, look at this how-to if you're comfortable in the Terminal: http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~pcarbo/macnexstar.html )

Thanks shoo, the website looks pretty useful since the only problem I have had so far is that there's no FAT32 option that I could see, all I got was MAC OS extended, MAC OS, UNIX and Free Space.

[shooraijin]

That's just in the Partitioning tab. Look under Erase for the MS-DOS option. Odd that MacOS doesn't give you a one step option, but you should be able to partition it as one thing, and then format it to the desired format later.

[mechana2015]

and setting that up should make it show up as a drive under "my computer" in windows?

[shooraijin]

Ought to. My only worry is that Windows will want to be greedy and offer people the chance to format the other partition when you plug it in. I've never tried what you're trying (because I've converted my parents to Mac finally, and have no need to), so I'd be interested to see how the PC will react. The Mac can handle either format, so it won't care.

[Kaligraphic]

If you throw Windows an NTFS-formatted bone, it will probably not offer to format the rest. In fact you'd end up going through diskmgmt.msc to format it.

Windows isn't helpful enough to offer to format space it notices, as long as it has a hoofhold on the device.

[shooraijin]

Does it make a difference, though, that it'll be FAT32? I don't think even Tiger knows how to format NTFS.

[Kaligraphic]

It shouldn't, as long as Windows can read it. It'll only offer to format completely blank/unreadable drives.

(Sorry, my brain must've dropped the part about the partition being FAT32, not NTFS. The behaviour is general, though, not filesystem-specific.)

Of course, if Windows decides to surprise and does offer, then I'll have to eat my words, but experience tells me it won't. (on this matter)

[mechana2015]

uhhh..shoo theres no option under the erase section for a FAT32 format...or windows.
I got MS-Dos only if it was applied to the whole drive, not just a partitition. if I erase >.<

I tried that tutorial and it didn't seem to work...I'm double checking though.

[shooraijin]

In Disk Utility, go under Partition and partition the drive, both into HFS+. Then go to Erase, and click the partition you want to be Windows, and erase it to MS-DOS Format. It seems to work fine for me under Jaguar.

[mechana2015]

In Disk Utility, go under Partition and partition the drive, both into HFS+. Then go to Erase, and click the partition you want to be Windows, and erase it to MS-DOS Format. It seems to work fine for me under Jaguar.

Hmm... so it has to be a HFS+ (mac extended journaling) format to erase it to DOS? It was being stingey with me but I'll try again.

[shooraijin]

No, but I suspect it has to be initialized to *something* during the partitioning step to show up as a formattable drive under Erase. Might as well be the native format.

[mechana2015]

It wont allow me to MS-DOS erase to a volume for some reason...just the whole disk. I sent a help PM to phil to see if he can help too.

[shooraijin]

How about the whole disk to MS-DOS, and then init afterwards the Mac portion only to HFS+ (i.e., do the process flipped over)?

[mechana2015]

Actually...I figured somthing really stupid out... MS-DOS mode works with both PC AND MAC OS-X. I got so frustrated that I formatted it to DOS and... wonder of wonders... it shows up on mac AND PC.

Oh well thanks for all the help and suggestions!
And now all I have to do is make two FILES not two partitions. Feh...I'm gonna go hide now.

[shooraijin]

That'll work. As we discussed last night (just for others who might be perusing this thread), if you're using older Mac files with resource forks, resource forks are supported under FAT but with a very kludgey method and it might not work well for all sorts of files, particularly applications.

Now that Apple is pushing UFS, which is fork-less and uses emulation to support resource forks like FAT, this may become less and less of an issue in the future.

I think OS X supports long file names, too. You need an extension to support Joliet LFNs under OS 9, though.