Hello,
I have just purchased a new External hard drive. I went to use CCC to clone the system onto the new drive but CCC did not recognise the new drive. Does this mean I can not clone my laptop hard drive straight to the new Hard drive?

Thanks
LY

Most external hard drives these days come from the shop pre-formatted for use on Windows computers, and your Mac doesn't like that.

You will need to format (initialise) the hard drive for use with the Mac -- you can do this through the "Disk Utility" program, which you will find in the Utilities folder inside your Applications tab.

thanks for the tip brains

Interestingly enough though, drives purchased from an Apple Premium Reseller should be in Apple format. I know the ones we sell are.

Western Digital's 'Studio' Edition (Mmm Aluminium) are Mac formatted as well, afaik.

Keep in mind too that even when formatted for Mac, the partition scheme may vary being either APM or GUID.

In my recent experience, OWC's NewerTech external drives have APM partition schemes and of course need to be changed to GUID in order to work properly with Time Machine. APM, however, will boot an Intel Mac, just that OS X install disks for Intel won't install to them.

Also, PPC Macs won't boot at all from GUID. The partition scheme has to be APM.

Dave

Can someone please tell me exactly how to do that? I can't see any options for "format" or "initialise". I guess I have to erase first?

You actually need to tell us what external drive you have - is it a brand name product? If not it may contain a chipset that your Mac wont recognise. Give us the name and basic specs and we'll guide you from there...

Thanks El Guardo.

In Disk Utility, it says it's a "465.8 GB Maxtor OneTouch III Media" and underneath that, indented, it says "New Volume"

One final question: is the external drive going to be Mac only or are you likely to swap between say a Mac and Windows machine?

I'd like to be able to swap between the two if possible.

If you want to swap between the two you will need to format it as MS-DOS>

This is available as part of the Erase options and I also believe Partitioning called MS-DOS(FAT).

Is FAT via the Mac the same as FAT32 on Windows?

And perhaps another consideration/question for those with the Maxtor, if we wipe the drive do we lose the One Touch functionality?

Hang in there chopper - we'll get to the answer shortly. I've drafted something below so that others may like to comment/improve it based on their experience. Don't follow through with it just yet...






To begin you need to first connect the drive to your Apple computer and then open Disk Utility (located in Applications>Utilities folder).

From there click on the 465.8 GB Maxtor OneTouch III Media drive (not New Volume). Then, to the right, you should see five buttons: First Aid, Erase, Partition, Raid & Restore.

Select Erase.

In the now available Volume Option dropdown menu select MS-DOS (FAT). Provide a name for the disk if you'd like and then click on the Security Options button at the bottom - and select one of the available options that suits you. Seeing as it's a new drive I'd recommend Zero Out Data. For the record, a 35-Pass Erase could take all night for a drive of your size, so don't select that.

Then click on the Erase button, select OK for any pop-ups and sit back and wait for the drive to clear itself.

Thanks for your help. I'm standing by for further instructions!