[SOLVED] Formatting Drives MacOSX Journaled vs Win-NTFS - Windows & Mac users advice needed!

[Sugar Kaine Mostly]

Hello everybody.

I am mainly 80% Windows user, and the other 20% Mac. I noticed a bit of difficulty with Mac & Windows based ''drives'' from SATA disks to even Flash based disks. My experiences aren't good ones, and I've learned to take caution when dealing with cross platform protocols. particularly with Flash Drives I have not had good experiences since formatting 32GB USB sticks to the Mac (from Windows) destroyed the ''partition'' structures ending up with a 200mb dead Flash Drive.

I always assumed, being a Windows user, that you can just wipe drives easily and format them to the accustomed platform with ease.

I am looking to upgrade my Macbook Pro Late 2011 hard drive to an SSD. I tried using one of my spare Intel 480gb SSD's but could never format it. I tried getting help on the forum here but I was never successful with it. I was able to use an old 40GB SSD from a Windows OS to then Wipe it on a 2008 Macbook Pro using El Capitan, no problem.

So my general question is, have any of you Mac Users used your existing drives from a Windows setup to then format it for a Mac environment using the standard disk utilities protocol?

And lastly, I have an extra FireWire800 dual 3.5'' enclosure RAID 0 that I would like to use with the MacBook Pro. I have various twin drives from previous Windows setups. Will I be able to format them? I ask because this will be my first using 3.5'' procedures while I've told you my bad experiences with the flash usb drives. I Don't want to damage any of my 1TB 3.5'' drives.

Any thoughts? Thanks

 

[Solandri]

The primary issue with mixing OS X with Windows is that OS X can read NTFS but can't write it, while Windows cannot read nor write HFS/AFS natively. You can get around the problem with drivers which add NTFS-write or HFS/AFS-read/write capability, but some implementations in the past have had problems which led to a corrupted filesystem.

The safest method is to create a shared partition formatted as exFAT. That filesystem was created specifically to solve this problem, and both OS X and Windows can read/write to it. Data you wish to share between the two OSes should reside on an exFAT partition, and external devices like flash drives which you wish to use with both OSes should be formatted as exFAT. I do not recommend using exFAT for your OS partition or for data which will be accessed almost exclusively by one OS, since it's not journaled. It's safer to put the OS and critical data on a journaled filesystem, then copy it to an exFAT partition the few times you need to access the data from the other OS. I have heard though that it is safer to format the drive as exFAT under Windows, and use it on the Mac. Not vice versa.

The issue you ran into with trying to use your spare 480 GB SSD may be because OS X uses GPT partition tables. Older Windows systems used MBR. I've noticed a lot of problems with how both OSes handle drives with the "wrong" partition table formatting. A lot of times they just give up, rather than allow you to convert even an empty drive to their preferred partition table format. You may have to use an external partition management tool to first convert the drive from MBR to GPT, then try to install OS X on it.

 

[Sugar Kaine Mostly]

Thank you Solandri. I think you had helped me out before. =) It's a good thing this site has angels like thou.

To be honest with, I think I understand what you mean, however, for the procedures in which you state - is there a bit of sacrifice in performance doing such methods vs buying new drives?

And lastly, any new hard disks on the market today, can I assume they'll be ready for a new fresh Sierra install? For example a 2TB SSHD 2.5'' or any new SSD 120gb?

Thanks

The primary issue with mixing OS X with Windows is that OS X can read NTFS but can't write it, while Windows cannot read nor write HFS/AFS natively. You can get around the problem with drivers which add NTFS-write or HFS/AFS-read/write capability, but some implementations in the past have had problems which led to a corrupted filesystem.

The safest method is to create a shared partition formatted as exFAT. That filesystem was created specifically to solve this problem, and both OS X and Windows can read/write to it. Data you wish to share between the two OSes should reside on an exFAT partition, and external devices like flash drives which you wish to use with both OSes should be formatted as exFAT. I do not recommend using exFAT for your OS partition or for data which will be accessed almost exclusively by one OS, since it's not journaled. It's safer to put the OS and critical data on a journaled filesystem, then copy it to an exFAT partition the few times you need to access the data from the other OS. I have heard though that it is safer to format the drive as exFAT under Windows, and use it on the Mac. Not vice versa.

The issue you ran into with trying to use your spare 480 GB SSD may be because OS X uses GPT partition tables. Older Windows systems used MBR. I've noticed a lot of problems with how both OSes handle drives with the "wrong" partition table formatting. A lot of times they just give up, rather than allow you to convert even an empty drive to their preferred partition table format. You may have to use an external partition management tool to first convert the drive from MBR to GPT, then try to install OS X on it.

 

[Solandri]

To be honest with, I think I understand what you mean, however, for the procedures in which you state - is there a bit of sacrifice in performance doing such methods vs buying new drives?

There is no performance sacrifice. MBR or GPT are just different ways writing data on how the partitions on the drive are arranged. MBR is the old method, now obsolete because it doesn't support partition sizes larger than 2 TB. GPT is the new method. All you're doing when you convert an empty drive from MBR to GPT is writing new data to the first few sectors.

For whatever reason, I've noticed that both Windows and OS X will sometimes refuse to let you modify a MBR-partitioned drive. My guess would be there's some sort of overly cautious safeguard in place to prevent you from accidentally overwriting the drive's partition table, and it's sometimes being triggered even when there's nothing to protect and you *want* to overwrite the partition table. If you use partition manager software to manually convert the drive to GPT, then OS X should have no problems with installing on it. (Just be sure you're converting the correct drive.)

 

[Sugar Kaine Mostly]

Solaris,

As of now, I have two Macbook Pros. One is my Core 2 Duo Late 2009 and the other is my i7 Late 2011. I have a Samsung 840 EVO 120GB SSD that had Windows 7 on it. I would now like to use it in either of my Mac's. Any tips? I plan to ''erase'' in the disk utilities and make it MacOS Journal Extended etc..

Because this was used on a previous Windows based machine, would I have a problem now using it on a Macbook Pro and formatting it to Apple infrastructure? Thanks

To be honest with, I think I understand what you mean, however, for the procedures in which you state - is there a bit of sacrifice in performance doing such methods vs buying new drives?

There is no performance sacrifice. MBR or GPT are just different ways writing data on how the partitions on the drive are arranged. MBR is the old method, now obsolete because it doesn't support partition sizes larger than 2 TB. GPT is the new method. All you're doing when you convert an empty drive from MBR to GPT is writing new data to the first few sectors.

For whatever reason, I've noticed that both Windows and OS X will sometimes refuse to let you modify a MBR-partitioned drive. My guess would be there's some sort of overly cautious safeguard in place to prevent you from accidentally overwriting the drive's partition table, and it's sometimes being triggered even when there's nothing to protect and you *want* to overwrite the partition table. If you use partition manager software to manually convert the drive to GPT, then OS X should have no problems with installing on it. (Just be sure you're converting the correct drive.)