Since when are harddrives actually the size advertised? I just bought a Western Digital 500 GB 2.5'' HD and I was surprised when it actually turned out to be 499.32 GB after the first initialization (on a mac). [more inside]
posted by mathiu on Oct 2, 2009 - 14 answers

n00bfilter: formatting hard drive, need all the help I can get! Specifically with Windows XP. everything inside... [more inside]
posted by alona on Apr 9, 2009 - 15 answers

I think I'm finally switching to Ubuntu on my main machine. I have two 160GB external drives, currently both with NTFS, currently mirrored (by software, not a RAID). With what and how should I format/use these guys? [more inside]
posted by tmcw on Mar 14, 2008 - 8 answers

How do I format a Linux'd harddrive with XP? [more inside]
posted by Satapher on Jun 14, 2006 - 7 answers

I found a magnet hiding under my PC yesterday. Now Windows is telling me that my second hard drive isn't formatted, but it's unable to format it when I try to do so. I don't care about the data on the drive, I just want a useable disk again! Any suggestions? [more inside]
posted by billybunny on May 19, 2006 - 9 answers

my hard drives recently perfomed some weird format-like trick on me recently and i need to restore the data I've tried a couple of different 'repair' programs to no avail. help! [more inside]
posted by quantumonkey on Apr 20, 2006 - 5 answers

please help a mac user format a hard drive using windows. [more inside]
posted by Silky Slim on Sep 9, 2005 - 2 answers

I've just bought a Lacie 160 gigabyte firewire drive. It's to be plugged into a Windows XP machine, but also to be written to and read by a Mac OSX machine. I want to format it with the FAT32 file system, but Windows won't let me. Is there a way to force the drive to format as FAT32? [More inside...] [more inside]
posted by skylar on Oct 28, 2004 - 5 answers

External Hard drive will not open, cpu informs me that it needs to be formatted. Need some assistance please. (MI) [more inside]
posted by chiababe on Sep 25, 2004 - 5 answers

Can I access a Windows 2000 formatted hard drive in an external hard drive enclosure with an Apple computer? [m-to-the-i] [more inside]
posted by plemeljr on May 25, 2004 - 8 answers