Re: Can a new Mac export to an XP drive?

From: Vanguardx (see_signature)
Date: 09/08/04 

Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2004 22:50:58 -0500

"Peter" <Peter@discussions.microsoft.com>
wrote in news:C9504020-1F24-4D3E-B69E-B3E6832990EC@microsoft.com:
> Fomat your ext. Hdd as basic disk with FAT 32 file format.
> You can use the XP disk management feature to format it at any time.

Be careful with reformatting advice. The OP said, "Mine in NTFS with XP
on it." It looks like the OP has Windows XP installed on that external
drive (don't know why but that's what he said). If the partition to be
reformatted is a different one that where Windows XP is installed and
has nothing of value on it or was backed up (and *verified* to be
readable backup media - backup without verification is playing Russian
Roulette), or if the partition has Windows XP and the OP doesn't care
about losing that install, then they can use the Disk Management applet
in Windows XP to reformat that partition. There is the safety that Disk
Management will not let you format the partition from which the current
instance of the operating system is running, but that might not be the
instance of Windows XP that the OP mentioned is installed on the
external drive.

While you can use 'convert' to switch from FAT32 to NTFS, there is no
utility (provided by Microsoft) to switch from NTFS to FAT32, so the
switch is destructive because you have to FORMAT the partition and wipe
everything on it to get to using FAT32. If the Windows XP install on
the external drive is important and must stick, and since it uses NTFS,
and if that is the only partition then using PartitionMagic or other 3rd
party software to resize partition(s) and create a new FAT32 in the then
unallocated space seems the only way to solve his drive-toting
file-transfer problem.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: How to force discarding of invalid cached partition contents?
    ... If I were doing a format then I'd include a call to IOCTL_DISK_UPDATE_PROPERTIES. ... According to MSDN this call is necessary when doing something like changing a FAT32 partition to NTFS, but my recent experiments make me wonder if Windows would still corrupt the resulting partition anyway. ... When the partition has a drive letter, Windows Explorer and/or some other parts of Windows XP read and cache a portion of the contents. ...
    (microsoft.public.development.device.drivers)
  • Re: Format C:
    ... > The Windows XP CD is bootable and contains all the tools necessary ... > to partition and format your drive. ... Clean Install Windows XP ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.newusers)
  • Re: How to force discarding of invalid cached partition contents?
    ... You might want to, before beginning the format sequence, obtain an exclusive ... When the partition has a drive letter, Windows ...
    (microsoft.public.development.device.drivers)
  • Re: Attempts to format G: hard drive partition fail
    ... If you choose the full format, ... and searched on "reformat" but the only thing I ... Because Disk Management utterly fails to format the ... partition also. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: Prepare new drive without using Disk Management
    ... I need to partition and format the drive. ... difficulty with larger discs over 300GB, ... It's apparent that you're familiar with XP's Disk Management utility ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)