External hard Drive

Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
When you buy an external hard drive say either Seagate or Western Digital do they come formatted already if using the MBA 11 inch? Thanks

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 10
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by marvfox View Post


    When you buy an external hard drive? ?do they come formatted already



    Yes and no. Don't waste your money on the ones that can be bought formatted correctly. Buy absolutely anything you want and format it yourself once you plug it into your computer. It takes 20 seconds and is free, compared to the often $50-$100 extra charge on the ones that come formatted.
  • Reply 2 of 10
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


    Yes and no. Don't waste your money on the ones that can be bought formatted correctly. Buy absolutely anything you want and format it yourself once you plug it into your computer. It takes 20 seconds and is free, compared to the often $50-$100 extra charge on the ones that come formatted.



    Unless you want FW800. The WD MyBook Studio is fantastic, and it comes Mac Formatted.
  • Reply 3 of 10
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by tonton View Post


    Unless you want FW800. The WD MyBook Studio is fantastic, and it comes Mac Formatted.



    MacBook Air, man.
  • Reply 4 of 10
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


    MacBook Air, man.



    Wait... aren't there supposed to be Thunderbolt adapters?
  • Reply 5 of 10
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by tonton View Post


    Wait... aren't there supposed to be Thunderbolt adapters?



    Sure, but none exist for FireWire, USB, or Ethernet yet.
  • Reply 6 of 10
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


    Sure, but none exist for FireWire, USB, or Ethernet yet.



    Well there is one. The Cinema Display.



    But I digress. You're right. Marv should get a USB drive and reformat it.
  • Reply 7 of 10
    Not sure if your question was actually answered or not.



    It is most likely formatted as Master Boot Record and Fat32. Your Mac will be able to read and write to it with no problems.



    If you'd like to be able to boot from the drive (Say you wish to create a partition on it to install OSX as a bootable backup in the event your internal HDD fails,) then you'll want to re-format it as GUID and MacOS Extended.
  • Reply 8 of 10
    marvfoxmarvfox Posts: 2,275member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


    MacBook Air, man.



    What does this crack mean?
  • Reply 9 of 10
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by marvfox View Post


    What does this crack mean?



    He mentioned that a FireWire hard drive would work well, but your laptop doesn't have any FireWire ports.
  • Reply 10 of 10
    marvfoxmarvfox Posts: 2,275member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


    He mentioned that a FireWire hard drive would work well, but your laptop doesn't have any FireWire ports.



    You are correct sir.
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