formating a mass storage device

[onion478]

i got a mass storage device from brother and its asking to format the device, I run on xp and he has a mac ? is if it format the device will it still work for him?

 

[ShadeTreeTech]

I need more information before I can answer. Does the drive have anything on it now? Are you and your brother trying to share data on this drive?

In lieu of more information, here are a couple of pointers to get started: Formatting will delete everything on the drive. Macs and PCs both read and write to FAT32 formatted drives. Newer MACs (10.5+ ?) will read NTFS formatted drives, but not write to them. Drives can be cut into slices by partitioning them, but that means the information may or may not be shared across partitions (slices). Do not INSTALL programs onto a FAT32 formatted drive (doesn't matter if it's MAC or PC).