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JOHN HARRISON Posted on Feb 19, 2019
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Can I format the seagate plus drive to win & mac and is so how?

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  • Seagate Master 395 Answers
  • Posted on Feb 19, 2019
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Joined: Jan 09, 2009
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Hi,

Format the drive in Windows and the MAC will read it fine ..

5 Related Answers

Anonymous

  • 1 Answer
  • Posted on Dec 29, 2007

SOURCE: How do I format a Seagate 500 to work on a Mac?

I bought one of the Seagate FreeAgent 500 devices yesterday and followed the instructions on the back of the box: plug it in; let the Mac recognize it; go to the Disk Utility function (found in Applications > Utilities); select the Erase tab and check the box to re-format the FreeAgent to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and choose a name for it.  Then proceed with the re-formatting.  It took only a few minutes but as soon as it was done, Time Machine (Leopard) kicked in and asked if I wanted it as my backup drive.  I said yes, and away it went.  Hope this helps.  By NewbieMacUserSept2007

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Anonymous

  • 65 Answers
  • Posted on Jan 07, 2009

SOURCE: Seagate Free Agent Drive Cannot be Modified on Mac G5

First of all Hello John :)

The new seagate drive you got needs to be unpartitioned and its file format system needs to be deleted and changed.

NB: You will lose all your data so make sure that you copy everything useful off it before you do these steps.

1. Get hold of a windows PC and right click on my computer
2. Choose manage ... choose disk management right click on the drive and delete the partition type
3. delete again until it comes unpartitioned space
4. Then go to your mac and you should be able to format it as a regular Mac drive.
5. If the Windows PC is inaccessible. Get hold of a copy of Linux UBUNTU distro. Boot your MAC from CD choose to boot os from CD (don't worry it will install nothring on your MAC it will just use the CD but make sure you choose the right option)
6. Keep your hard drive attached so it gets detected during bootup. Once the UBUNTU OS boots choose GParted and from there do the same thing i explained above.

Hope that this was of help :)

Cheers
(please take some time to rate solution)


Anonymous

  • 86 Answers
  • Posted on Apr 19, 2009

SOURCE: Trying to format for MAC

I had a similar issue and was able to work around it by partitioning the drive. See this site for information: http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/partitioning_tiger.html

Overview: Open Disk Utility, Click on the Drive, Click Partition, Choose the number of partitions, and click Apply.

(It's written for video editors, but is applicable in your situation)

Let me know if this helps!

Anonymous

  • 250 Answers
  • Posted on Oct 24, 2009

SOURCE: I have Seagate - FreeAgent Go 500GB External USB

Open up the control panel with the drive connected, open administrative tools and computer management. Select storage and see if the drive is listed there. It will probably let you format it from there.

Anonymous

  • 54 Answers
  • Posted on Jan 20, 2010

SOURCE: Mac Formatted Seagate Go 250GB Hard Drives are nearly $40 extra..

Yes, you can format a windows OS drive on your MAC to one of the MAC filing system, which would work just as good.

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I recently bought a Seagate Backup Plus Portable Hard Drive with 1TB of storage. The first time I used it, I was able to drag and drop around 100 photos from my Mac without any problems, but the second...

Oh I have the exact same problem - its because its not formatted for a mac. You need to empty the device before formatting as it will wipe whatever is on it. If you format as FAT32 it can be used by both mac and PC.
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Whys is my backup plus not showing connected

HI,
Seagate Diagnostics for Mac Software:
Designed to check the overall health of your Seagate FreeAgent Go for Mac and FreeAgent Desk for Mac drive. Please Follow instruction.

http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/item/seagate-diag-mac-master/

http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/207851en

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Mac Support
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How to write to a seagate hard drive from a mac

you will need to reformat the seagate drive if it has not been formatted for mac.to do this.
connect your seagate drive to the mac.go to spotlight the magify glass at the top right corner and type in disk utility and select disk utility
in disk utility make sure you select the seagate hard drive and choose erase. at the middle of the screen look for format and choose mac os extended. click erase.
you should now be able to write files to your seagate drive.
also if you would like be able to transfer files to and from a mac or PC then you will need to format the drive as FAT.
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Yes you can, but use the FAT32 format, it is the only format that both can read and write to.
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My mac OS X 10.4.11 won't let me drag and drop into Seagate Expansion 500GB - says it can't be modified!!! Help please.

If the drive is formatted with NTFS (the format used by recent Windows operating systems), then you won't be able to write to that file system.

What you will need to do is reformat the drive to HFS or FAT32.

If you will be moving the drive between a Windows and a Mac, then you'll have to format with FAT32. If you will only be using the drive on your Mac or other Macs, then format the drive with HFS.
NOTE: unless you copy the existing files off of the drive first, you will lose all data on the drive.
To do this, do the following:
  • Copy all existing data off of the Seagate drive to a safe location
  • Unmount the Seagate hard drive
  • go to your Machintosh HD / Applications / Utilities folder and start "Disk Utilities"
  • Select the Seagate drive from the list
  • click on the Erase tab
  • Select the Format. For HFS choose "Mac OS Extended (journaled)" for FAT32 choose "MS-DOS FAT"
  • Type a name for your volume in the Name: field
  • Click the "Erase..." button and allow the Disk Utilities program to format the drive
  • Once the drive is formatted, you will be able to save files to the disk.
Thanks for using FixYa and have a great day
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I plugged my seagate into my mac OS and backed it up first, then went to my pc running windows xp and tried to locate the seagate drive and couldn't. Can I only use the Seagate on one machine or another?

Hi,

If you are planning to use the Seagate Hard Drive on a PC and MAC better format it on your MAC Computer thru disc Utility and choose MS-DOS. This should solve the problem.

Mac has the ability to recognize a FAT, NTFS and MAC File System for the hard drive but the PC Computer cannot recognize MAC File System.

Check on your mac the File system of your hard drive.
MAC OS Extended
MAC OS Extended (Journaled)

If this is the file system then you now know that it will not be read by PC.

Also formating it with the use of PC will only result in an NTFS File System, and it can be read by Mac but it is only in a Read Only mode. You cannot copy paste or even erase on the drive having an NTFS on a MAC.


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The hard drive volume format is only for MAC. Check the volume format if it is MAC OS Extended or MAC OS Extended (Journaled). If it is, then change it to MS DOS to make it readable and writable to a PC and MAC OS
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My Freeagent external hard drive doesn't show up on My Computer

Your Mac would have formatted the Seagate drive as HFS+ (journaled) format. If you have access to a Mac, copy your data off the Seagate to any Mac, then use your PC to reformat the Seagate drive in FAT32 format. Macs recognize FAT32 format, and can store data in it, but can't create the format. The Mac holding your data can store it on the Seagate in the FAT32 format, and you can then copy the files to your PC. Hope this helps.
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