HD transfer from Mac to PC

[Atlas]

I had been using an external hard drive to back up my macbook.  I recently purchased a new hard drive, and no longer need my old external hard drive and would like to format it for use with a PC.  How do I do this, as I can't get any PC's to recognize the drive, likely because it's formated in MAC OS (extended).  I tried formatting it using my parallels side, but the virtual machine wouldn't recognize the drive either.

Thanks a lot.

[Zylstra]

Hello, if I may clarify:
You are trying to format the drive using XP on a Virtual Machine?
I think you will find that this operation might not be possible.

(Translated: Mac is evil, evil, evil, evil, evil, evil)

"I recently purchased a new hard drive"
Do you mean a new hard drive, or a new computer? (sorry if it sounds like a stupid question, but a lot of users here get their terminology wrong)

What operating system is the PC using?
If you have Vista:
Click Start> Control Panel> Maitenence> Under "Administrative Tools" find "Create and Format Hard Disk Partitions" and click it
Find your USB drive, and format it.

[Atlas]

Hi,
I am trying to format the HD using the Mac side.  The only options available include Mac formats, and MS-DOS and UNIX.  Would MS-DOS even be an acceptable format for a PC running Windows XP?  I would love to format it using my windows VM, but it does not recognize the drive.

Thanks

[Zylstra]

Hi,
I am trying to format the HD using the Mac side.  The only options available include Mac formats, and MS-DOS and UNIX.  Would MS-DOS even be an acceptable format for a PC running Windows XP?  I would love to format it using my windows VM, but it does not recognize the drive.

Thanks

Good Evening:
If you can, use the NTFS format to format a drive for the Windows operating system.
MS-DOS may be acceptable to get it detected by Windows, but once you get Windows to recognize the format, you will want to format it again in Windows and use the NTFS file format if you plan on using this for any Windows 2000 and up PC's, if you plan on connecting it to a ME, 98, or 98SE computer, you will need to use the FAT32 format.