HELP, I can't get my hard drive to work with Mac & Windows

[*kev*]

I've currently got a 13" macbook running OSX 10.5 and a Windows machine running Vista 64, I'm trying to format the drive i used to use as my time machine backup drive to use as backup drive for my pictures across both machines.

I have used disk utility to format the drive to MS-DOS (fat) and in the partition tab changed the Partition Map Scheme to Master Boot record, as recommended to work with a windows machine. However when i connect the drive to my Windows machine it just beeps at me.

What am I doing wrong, and what do i need to do to make it work correctly?

I have attached a couple of screen shots of my disk utility if thats of any use, to anyone that wants to try to help me remedy my problem.

Thanks

Kev

 

[jaymd]

I think you will need to format/partition it on your Windows machine 1st to work on both.

 

[neil_g]

by beep at you do you mean the noise you normally get when plugging in a USB device?

if so its probably just not assigned a drive letter.. can you..

right click "computer" go "manage". click on "disk management", this should show all attached drives, can you do a screenshot?

 

[Chappers]

I'm running multiple drives on both Mac and PC. However I have them formated as NTFS and using Paragons NTFS for Mac so the Mac can read and write to them. No problems whatsoever. However I did format the NTFS drives via a PC.

I did have some problems formatting a Mac drive on the PC as it wouldn't see the drive. Now it's some time ago and I'm a bit woolly on the exact procedure ( it was with XP Pro as well), but with the drive connected, you need to go to Disk management and Mount the Drive. Now I can't remember exactly where in DM it is, but a quick Google may give you the answer

 

[*kev*]

Thanks for your help with this everyone, I downloaded Paragons NTFS for MAC which recognised the drive and allowed me to format it as NTFS on my Mac. When I plugged it into my PC the drive still beeped as it was trying to mount, after i ran DSKCHK it reported having a bad sector, I'm now running Acronis Disk Director to try to sort out the bad sector, if it doesn't work i'll be on to Iomega tech support to try to get it replaced as it's still under warranty.

I'l let you know how i get, but thanks again for the help.

Kev