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Moving external drive to PC

S

stuartm

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 17, 2007
77
0
I have a 1TB external drive which is Mac OS external (journaled).
it has photos, music film etc. and is using approx. 500gb of the available space
Im on a non Intel mac running 10.5.8

I need to retain my files on the ExHDD and move it to a PC.
I know there is software which can enable me to read the mac drive (HFS or similar) from a PC but how do I then reformat the drive to act as a normal PC drive for future and ensure that I won't loose my files in the re-formatting process?
 
Renzatic

Renzatic

Suspended
Aug 3, 2011
9,561
10,118
Gramps, what the hell am I paying you for?
I came across this after a bit of digging. I have no idea how well it works, but I'll say this:

Back up your data before making the attempt.

Honestly, since you'll be erring on the side of caution, and backing everything up anyway, I'd suggest just getting another drive, and copying everything over. It's far more straightforward, and, most importantly, completely nondestructive. You can grab a 1TB USB 3.0 external drive for about $70 these days, and you can format and reconvert your old drive to NTFS once you're done.

Having more options to back up your data is never a bad thing.
 
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