How to convert external/internal FAT32 drive partition to NTFS with only a MAC
Long story:
Yes its the all not missed 5 year glitch with the hard disk and its all crashing down on you. Now its time to get my Mac OS back up and running which is the easy part (as usual). It is when you want the windows part as well which is the show stopper. Not sure what your unique case is but for me, I needed to switch my FAT32 partition to NTFS, and I did not have any windows installed with bootcamp to use the DOS command line. My cd-drive was faulty, so I could not use my Installer CD either, and I did not want the trouble of removing my drive physically just to bring it to a PC. Many searches online tell you to use Disk Utility in mac, but I CAN'T find that bl**dy NTFS partitioning option. Are they lying? No 3rd party commercial apps for me either.
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| Disk Utility with NTFS support |
Long story short:
1. Download NTFS support, install, restart: http://www.tuxera.com/mac/ntfs-3g-2009.11.14u1-mac_2009-12-07_170539.dmg
2. Open Disk Utility (in mac of course), and *tada* you will now see the option to partition your drive in NTFS format
On a side note: I also recommend WinClone to conveniently archive a clone of your windows partition, makes it easy to backup and restore without re-installing and setup every time.
Note: Against user feedback on this post, I should point out that I was performing this on a fresh windows installation, so any existing windows data will be lost.
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Do help with a short 3 question survey on how I can better help, or you could provide some feedback.
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I tried this and it worked up until I had to mount the newly formatted disk, at which point it gave me this error message:
ReplyDeleteNTFS-3G could not mount /dev/disk0s3 at /Volumes/BOOTCAMP because the following problem occurred:
/Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Support/fusefs.kext failed to load - (libkern/kext) link error; check the system/kernel logs for errors or try kextutil(8). the MacFUSE file system is not available (71)
Any ideas?
Hi,
DeleteI suspect you may be trying this on a 64bit mac OS. This implementation was done with Mac OS version 10.6.
You would need to find other methods for your case if that is so.
The same as my problem
ReplyDeleteThis step by step was done on snow leopard, so if you are using Lion it could be different.
ReplyDeleteI won't know for sure, but there were several other user reports with your error on the web.
You could try getting the most updated driver, or try this: http://wualablog.blogspot.com/2011/07/wuala-for-os-x-lion.html
(have not tried personally)
Whoa, don't write "Convert" FAT32 to NTFS - I just stopped an ex Windows person from doing this.
ReplyDeleteHis perception was, that you are describing how the Windows "CONVERT" function works on a Mac.
However, the CONVERT function on Windows really converts a FAT partition into a NTFS partition WITHOUT data loss, so it is a real conversion. On the Mac it is really just a quick high level reformatting whilst placing a new file system on that disk, thus erasing all data on it…
That was very helpful! Thank you!!
ReplyDeleteThat was very helpful! Thank you!!
ReplyDeleteSorry I just don't know how to change it, After i click on format and change it to ntfs, what do I have to click to make that change for real? It keeps staying on FAT 32
ReplyDeletecan you please answer to my mail ? its quite urgent
thank you
coni.ferreiro@gmail.com
I have replied to your email with screenshot of disk utility. Basically you need to use those little '+' and '-' buttons to add a NTFS partition. Then click on the "apply" button.
ReplyDelete