how to format drives?

[sirbonneville]

i have a mac and i want to make 3 internal 2.5 inch HDD hard drives usable for windows 8.1. i ordered a usb to sata adapter cable and that just got here, so i want to know how i can do it? HDD's:

 

- 750gb HGST 750gb 5400rpm

- 500gb WD scorpio blue 500gb 5400rpm

- 160gb Toshiba 160gb 5400rpm

[Benergy]

Just now, sirbonneville said:

i have a mac and i want to make 3 internal 2.5 inch HDD hard drives usable for windows 8.1. i ordered a usb to sata adapter cable and that just got here, so i want to know how i can do it? HDD's:

 

- 750gb HGST 750gb 5400rpm

- 500gb WD scorpio blue 500gb 5400rpm

- 160gb Toshiba 160gb 5400rpm

http://osxdaily.com/2012/01/04/format-an-external-hard-drive-or-usb-flash-drive-for-mac-os-x/

Format it to NTFS and that's it good to go

[orangecat]

I think you have to blank the drives first because to my knowledge Macs can't use or format drives as NTFS.

[sirbonneville]

1 minute ago, Benergy said:

http://osxdaily.com/2012/01/04/format-an-external-hard-drive-or-usb-flash-drive-for-mac-os-x/

Format it to NTFS and that's it good to go

i dont have a ntfs setting?

[sirbonneville]

1 minute ago, Kilobytez95 said:

I think you have to blank the drives first because to my knowledge Macs can't use or format drives as NTFS.

i 100% erased the drives, now what?

[conspiravision]

" HDD hard drives usable for windows 8.1 " - format them while in windows?  

[Benergy]

Just now, sirbonneville said:

i dont have a ntfs setting?

Oh, right.

There's literally no reason Apple shouldn't include that.

Can you install GParted on OS X? 

[orangecat]

1 minute ago, sirbonneville said:

i 100% erased the drives, now what?

Plop them in a PC and boost the Windows installation, you can format the drives fromt here.

[sirbonneville]

1 minute ago, Kilobytez95 said:

Plop them in a PC and boost the Windows installation, you can format the drives fromt here.

sorry,what do you mean boost the windows installation?

[sirbonneville]

2 minutes ago, Benergy said:

Oh, right.

There's literally no reason Apple shouldn't include that.

Can you install GParted on OS X? 

wahat is gparted?

[orangecat]

Just now, sirbonneville said:

sorry,what do you mean boost the windows installation?

Boot sorry. Just boot into the Windows installation and you shoudl be able to delete the partitions and create new ones without installing the OS to them.

[orangecat]

1 minute ago, sirbonneville said:

wahat is gparted?

GParted is a partitioning software you can boot into, it's based off Linux.

[sirbonneville]

Just now, Kilobytez95 said:

Boot sorry. Just boot into the Windows installation and you shoudl be able to delete the partitions and create new ones without installing the OS to them.

is there any other way to do that without using windows installation? i only have a mac, and im building a pc but i dont have any pc's besides the one m building

[sirbonneville]

1 minute ago, Kilobytez95 said:

GParted is a partitioning software you can boot into, it's based off Linux.

is it for os mavericks?

[orangecat]

Just now, sirbonneville said:

is there any other way to do that without using windows installation? i only have a mac, and im building a pc but i dont have any pc's besides the one m building

I'm not sure, NTFS is a Windows thing I don't think anything else can really use it. Personally I only use a Windows PC and not a Mac so i wouldn't know. You can try and boot Windows on a Mac with a VM or dual boot with bootcamp or whatever it's called and try that.

[orangecat]

1 minute ago, sirbonneville said:

is it for os mavericks?

GParted is a bootable software (like an operating system) I don't really know much about how Macs work but you can try and put it on a USB and boot from that USB but I can't guarantee it will work cuz it's a mac.

[Benergy]

Just now, Kilobytez95 said:

GParted is a bootable software (like an operating system) I don't really know much about how Macs work but you can try and put it on a USB and boot from that USB but I can't guarantee it will work cuz it's a mac.

GParted is a standard program that runs in any(?) Linux OS, it will also run in the bootable environment as you mentioned.

As OS X is a Unix based OS, I was wondering if the GParted program can run inside OS X, after some googling it doesn't look like it's designed to.

[sirbonneville]

let me clarify; i took apart a few laptops i dont use anymore and each one of them had windows vista, 7, or 8 on it. how can i wipe it and then use it in my next windows 10 build? sorry for being unclear i didnt mean take it out of a mac and then put it into a windows pc

[A Guy Eating Cereal]

1 minute ago, sirbonneville said:

let me clarify; i took apart a few laptops i dont use anymore and each one of them had windows vista, 7, or 8 on it. how can i wipe it and then use it in my next windows 10 build? sorry for being unclear i didnt mean take it out of a mac and then put it into a windows pc

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/storage/how-format-hard-drive-in-windows-3470977/

Easiest way to explain

[Benergy]

6 minutes ago, sirbonneville said:

is it for os mavericks?

 

Just now, sirbonneville said:

let me clarify; i took apart a few laptops i dont use anymore and each one of them had windows vista, 7, or 8 on it. how can i wipe it and then use it in my next windows 10 build? sorry for being unclear i didnt mean take it out of a mac and then put it into a windows pc

Download this:

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/gparted/gparted-live-0.25.0-1-i686.iso 

 

Then burn the ISO to a USB flash drive. Edit: using this http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/how-to-burn-an-iso-to-usb-flash-drive.598291/

 

You can then boot from the USB flash drive, and you'll be able to format the drives to NTFS from there.

[zMeul]

as far as I recall, the only file system cross-compatible is exFAT, but needs to be formatted from within MAC OS

also, exFAT is not bootable

[sirbonneville]

7 minutes ago, Benergy said:

 

Download this:

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/gparted/gparted-live-0.25.0-1-i686.iso 

 

Then burn the ISO to a USB flash drive. (I don't know any OS X software that can do this, you might want to consider dual booting Windows to avoid these problems)

You can then boot from the USB flash drive, and you'll be able to format the drives to NTFS from there.

what size flash drive do i need?

 

[Benergy]

Just now, sirbonneville said:

what size flash drive do i need?

 

Anything 512MB or bigger 

[sirbonneville]

Just now, Benergy said:

Anything 512MB or bigger 

thank you

[sirbonneville]

i have 1 more question. if i have a hdd with windows 8 i pulled out of a notebook can i just plug it in via sata/sata power to my motherboard and boot from that and everything will be good?