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Format a NTFS hard drive in 10.3 - NOT
Authored by: Bruce Miller on Apr 21, '05 05:53:14PM

I was confused by the hint's intent also. Was the drive finally to go back inside Windows box or for Mac?

Additionally, I had nothing but trouble trying to install a Windows OS on any disk formatted by a Mac as FAT32.

Windows could mount as external drive, but required reformatting with Partition Magic to actually install an OS. It reported as corrupted MFT in PM otherwise. All drives for Windows use get formatted using only Windows since for me.

Hopefully, that donation receipient doesn't go through what I did if that drive was meant to be put back inside the Windows tower.



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Format a NTFS hard drive in 10.3 - NOT
Authored by: meh on Apr 23, '05 03:55:59PM

Just one more comment here to clarify.
I was given a PC with XP on it and I knew of a group that would benefit from having the machine. I didn't want to just give the computer to them, because the hard drive still had all the data on it from the original donor.
Being lazy and a Mac snob, I didn't want to have to plug in everything to the PC only to boot if off a floppy and then format the hard drive, so I took the hard drive out of the PC and put it in an external enclosure, with plans on wiping the drive in OS X.
I wasn't able to do so, since NTFS drives are read only when mounted in OS X. I looked around on the web for solutions, and the only one I had found was to boot up off of a Mac OS install CD and then wipe the drive from there (which, in hindsite, is probably just doing the same thing that I described in the hint - formatting an unmounted drive).
That seemed to be too much work for me, so I experimented a bit and discovered the solution I posted about.
Now that the drive is wiped clean, I can give it (and the rest of the computer) to the youth group. I'll let them know that the drive needs to be formatted and that Windows needs to be installed.
My concern was in securing the donor's data (by destroying this copy of it), and in not having to do much. I accomplished both goals.
To remove the hard drive from the PC, I had to undo 6 screws in total, and 2 cables (power and IDE). To use my external USB2 enclosure, I just popped the lid off and plugged the drive in to power and IDE (didn't bother closing the enclosure). Now that the drive is wiped, I put it back into the PC (4 mounting screws, power and IDE cables, 2 screws to hold the case panel in place) and all is well.
Now back to being lazy...



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