Can I Format a Partition for a Mac using Windows?

[DngrMs]

I have an external hard drive with two partitions, one is formatted NTFS the other is not formatted. I want to be able to use the spare partition on a Mac (read/write). I know nothing about Mac's, I don't even know how to use one.

Can I use some Windows software to format the spare partition in Mac native format? If so, how please?

TIA.

[Artemis]

If it is just an external drive then all you need to do is format the drive as HFS (Hierarchal File System), this can be done from GParted within a Linux distro LiveCD or using GParted live: http://sourceforge.net/projects/gparted/.

There is also HFS+, but if it is just for a removable drive for use as an external data drive with OSX then HFS should be fine.

[DngrMs]

BTW thanks for the reply.

As it turns out I was able to learn to use a Mac (properly) faster that the Apple fanbois around me could. The drive in question has a spare partition but since it didn't "pop up on the desktop" as soon as it was plugged in they ass-umed it didn't exist or wasn't accessible.

As soon as I found the "Disk Utilities" app on their Macs I was able to format it natively.

[Artemis]

BTW thanks for the reply.

As it turns out I was able to learn to use a Mac (properly) faster that the Apple fanbois around me could. The drive in question has a spare partition but since it didn't "pop up on the desktop" as soon as it was plugged in they ass-umed it didn't exist or wasn't accessible.

As soon as I found the "Disk Utilities" app on their Macs I was able to format it natively.

Well having a mac and formatting a drive using the disk utilities applet is THE recommended way to configure the drive The tenor of your first post implied that you did not have access to a MacOS based PC, so my answer was based on using a third party utility.

The beauty of OSX is that it is relatively simple to use, and of course the lack of virus/malware infections written to attack Mac PC's make it a safer computing environment. If you are really interested in using a Mac there are VMWare applications like Parallels and Crossover that allow you to run Windows based apps within an OSX environment (even games).

[DngrMs]

Understood. I wanted to solve the problem for somebody else before they returned with their Mac, and I only have a Windows PC. They also told me the drive couldn't be seen on their Mac and I believed them hence the search for a Windows solution.

I wasn't in a position to assume a Mac had a 'Disk Utilities' application and they (and two other Mac users I asked) were ignorant to its existence. Of course had they, or I, known about it life would have be rosey from day one.

That 3 different Mac users said "if it doesn't pop up as a shortcut on the desktop when I plug it in it must not work/exist" is a sad testament to how Apple keeps their customers ignorant. And I'm a little surprised about Apple's failure here, even Windows prompts you to format a new disk when you plug it in, something I'd have expected Apple to be well ahead on.

However I got there I got the brownie points in the end.