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I purchased a 3TB HDD which I intend to put into an USB enclosure for the iMAC. The drive is recognized at boot but only shows 801.23GB, same can be duplicate in windows. Ive tried to format the drive with no luck (both OSs), finally I read an article that appears I should connect the drive internally.

First I tried win7, it recognized all 3TB and will format the dive but only NTFS. I thought FAT32 would be an option, but when I shrink the drive its formatted in 3GB partitions (Id rather not do this 1000 times).

My other option is to find some way of connecting the eSATA drive directly to the iMAC (something I have very little knowledge of)

So my question is how would you recommend getting the MAC to recognize all 3TB? Optimally I woul dlike to have it fomatted via Journaled MAC OS but at this point I'll take anything that works. or to break it down further: 1) MAC - how do you connect an eSATA drive directly to an iMAC 2) Win7 - how do you format a 3TB drive for one FAT32 partition

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Newer versions of windows have an artificial limit to the size of their FAT drives while formatting - 32 gb. You can use this to format instead - you will need the drive to have a drive letter, but its good... and freakishly fast.

Unless your iMac has a esata port (and the same type- there's powered and unpowered ones), you cannot connect it to a esata hdd.

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Thank you, I will have to give it a try when I get home tonight. Once I get the entire drive formatted in FAT32, do you know if I will be able to reformat it using MAC OS journaling or will I always have to keep as FAT32? – DataPimp Aug 26 '11 at 15:27
I believe you should be able to reformat it. Not all that familiar with OS X, but there's no reason not – Journeyman Geek Aug 27 '11 at 0:53
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