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Seagate Community Forums :
External Hard Drives :
FreeAgent Products :
Can FreeAgent Desk for Windows be reformatted for Mac OS (Airport Extreme)?
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Can FreeAgent Desk for Windows be reformatted for Mac OS (Airport Extreme)?
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aine
Regular Visitor
Posts: 4
Registered: 02-14-2009
Message 1 of 9
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Hi, I bought the Freeagent Desk drive, pre-formatted for Windows (i.e. not the special FreeAgent Desk for Mac product). What I want to do now is hook it up to my Apple Airport Extreme base station (USB) so that I can access the drive wirelessly from my Windows desktop. Bottom line, the drive has to be formatted for MacOS. Question 1: can the Freeagent Desk drive be reformatted for Mac? The box doesn't say that it supports Mac, but it might?? Question 2: If answer #1 is "yes", then assuming I have access to a friend's Mac, how do I reformat it? I plugged the drive into the Mac, started Disk Utilty, I saw the drive, but it seemed like all the options under "Erase" were grayed out. Ideas? Thanks!
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Solved!
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02-14-2009 11:08 AM
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Re: Can FreeAgent Desk for Windows be reformatted for Mac OS (Airport Extreme)?
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aine
Regular Visitor
Posts: 4
Registered: 02-14-2009
Message 3 of 9
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Thanks for the comments, but I do believe it is a format issue. Here's why I think that -- First, the drive does show up just fine on my Mac desktop when I connect it via the Mac's USB port, even though it is formatted as NTFS. However, connected to the Mac's USB port is not where the drive will ultimately end up. Rather, it is going to connect to the Airport Extreme's USB port. The Airport Extreme, by contrast, requires HFS+; it is documented that it will not work with NTFS. That is why I need to reformat this drive using the Mac OS file system. So I am just trying to figure out whether this drive can be reformatted to the Mac OS file system, so that my Airport Extreme can share it over the network.
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02-17-2009 02:42 PM
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Re: Can FreeAgent Desk for Windows be reformatted for Mac OS (Airport Extreme)?
[ Edited ]
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troyd2009
Regular Visitor
Posts: 3
Registered: 02-17-2009
Message 6 of 9
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Hmmm. I tried this accepted solution and now the Freeagent drive won't mount. What next? The drive seems to refuse to be partitioned as a Mac Extended partition. Don't know why. Message Edited by troyd2009 on 02-17-2009 09:10 PM
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02-17-2009 08:44 PM
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Re: Can FreeAgent Desk for Windows be reformatted for Mac OS (Airport Extreme)?
[ Edited ]
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troyd2009
Regular Visitor
Posts: 3
Registered: 02-17-2009
Message 7 of 9
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Seems I can partition as DOS-FAT and the drive comes back and is now mountable. I'll try the backup and see if it works. Seagate backup software seems to work. Is there any significant downside in leaving the filesystem as FAT on a Mac? Message Edited by troyd2009 on 02-17-2009 09:08 PM
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02-17-2009 09:06 PM
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Re: Can FreeAgent Desk for Windows be reformatted for Mac OS (Airport Extreme)?
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troyd2009
Regular Visitor
Posts: 3
Registered: 02-17-2009
Message 9 of 9
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Not too much of a limitation then. I plan on using one partition for Time Machine and the other for the Seagate Backup tool. So I think I'll be ok.
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02-18-2009 05:02 PM
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