how to format external LaCie, formerly Mac drive, for Win 10?

needsleep · 11 Mar 2021

We are running a low level format of an external LaCie drive that was once a Mac drive running HFS. It recognizes the drive. It starts the format and then at the end errors out with a message that it can't be formatted. We'll get the exact message if needed, but it doesn't say any more than that. No indication of why it can't format it. We are using the USB-3 interface on it. In the past we did not use USB-3 when running on the Mac

We're using Win 10's native formatter. We are selecting NTFS and deselecting Quick Format. The sector size defaults to 4,096. We don't know if that should be changed... our application is video editing almost exclusively.

Is there a better formatting program to use?
Our Windows version is 18363.1379

Thanks,

Berton · 11 Mar 2021

I have a WD 1TB drive branded for Mac [marked on the case], used GPARTED LiveCD to wipe the drive and created a new single partition followed by formatting as NTFS, The main issue is the formatting for Mac, probably HPFS. The GPARTED LiveCD is based upon a lite version of Linux and can handle a number of formats, quite handy to have in the 'toolbox'. I have even used it to format drives as FAT32 larger than the Windows-limit of 32GB. If using on both Windows and Mac the formatting could be exFAT, gets around the 4GB single file size limit of FAT32. DiskPart may be useful but my needs were more involved.
GParted -- A free application for graphically managing disk
device partitions

needsleep · 11 Mar 2021

all right. thanks for the tip.
Before I read your reply, my wife reformatted it on the Mac as exFAT and now it reads on the PC just fine. We are trying the format to NTFS again. If that fails again, we'll be in line to try gparted live CD. I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks.

Berton · 11 Mar 2021

Sounds good but since you have a Mac available I'd leave it as exFAT for commonality [I had a MacBook Pro from 2010 but the drive controller on the motherboard died a year ago]. Mac traditionally had issues with NTFS formatting, usually could read but not write without an add-in program.

needsleep · 11 Mar 2021

That failed again. So I was looking at Gparted Live on a USB stick, (we have no CD drive) and the wife just rolled it all back to a Mac formatted exFat, and decided to stop the chase at that point. At least I know my next steps! Thanks and have a good day.

spunk · 11 Mar 2021

As stated. If you are going to share the drive between a PC and a MAC, you should leave it exFAT, which is the most compatible. MAC OSX can see NTFS drives but will not allow you to write to them, without a 3rd party app..
If you are only using it on a PC, then when you attach it to a Windows 10 machine, press the Windows key+X and choose Disk Management. Here you can Right click the drive and choose Format to NTFS, or you can right click and Delete all partitions and then right click and choose to make a new Simple Volume and Format it NTFS. Or use a 3rd party Partition app, like Minitool Partition Wizard.