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External Hard drive PC/Mac ?

AngelWingsX

AngelWingsX

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 7, 2006
3
0
New Jersey, US
I'm planning on purchasing the new MacBook - this will be my first mac. I recently bought an external hard drive for my PC but it is windows/mac compatible. I've put all my audio/photoshop files on it...will these files transfer well if I plug my external hard drive in my mac or will the mac need to format the hard drive? I'm hoping to use this hard drive as a huge flash drive type device.

I would hate to plug in my external hd into my new mac and lose all of my PC backup files! :eek: Let me know!
 
Format it as FAT32 and both platforms will be able to read and write with it. There are limitations of FAT32 but it's the only solution that doesn't cost any money. :)
 
Like you said, nothing major. Sounds good. That makes me feel a little better. I won't be running programs off this hard drive - I just want it to be a file transfer and backup.

I'm looking forward to getting my first Mac - can't wait until they start shipping. :D I'll probably be asking a lot of questions shortly. lol. Trying to decide if I should buy a Rev A of the Macbooks or wait to see if anything goes wrong.

Thanks for your help!
 
Here's how it works... If the drive is:
HFS: Mac can read/write, PC can't do jack.
FAT32: Mac can read/write, PC can read/write.
NTFS: Mac can only read, PC can read/write.
 
Sorry to jump on OPs thread but which type of drive do you forumites recommend? I am currently looking at the Lacie Triple Interface. I want something with FireWire so I can boot from it. Is an enclosure and a normal drive the better way to go?
 
I use a Smartdisk CrossFire to store my music library on. I've only ever used one external drive and I've never used an enclosure so I'm afraid I can't compare it to anything. Anyway, did you not just buy a drive?
 
Coutsy said:
Sorry to jump on OPs thread but which type of drive do you forumites recommend? I am currently looking at the Lacie Triple Interface. I want something with FireWire so I can boot from it. Is an enclosure and a normal drive the better way to go?
Click to expand...
I use a LaCie mobile hard drive, and it I love it. Some people seem to like the DIY approach, and they get their own enclosure and drive, but I like the LaCie drives because they are compact. If I were buying a drive and didn't care about the size, I might build it myself. LaCie is nice, however, because you know you can boot from them via FireWire. Many of the drive enclosures don't even mention Mac being supported.

Can someone post a list of FireWire AND USB hard drive enclosures that will allow you to use the drive as your startup volume (in FireWire mode, of course)? That list might be helpful for people looking to build their own.
 
So I just bought a Maxtor One Touch 320 GB External Hard Drive. I use both a PC (running on Windows XP) and a PowerBook G4 (OS X) fairly equally. I want to back up my files from both computers. Unfortunately the HD I bought won't format to FAT32. I have approximately 2 weeks to return the current HD... I'm looking for an external hard drive under $130 or $150, any recommendations for ones that will format to FAT32?
 
Free software could be your friend.

For Mac OS X: Macfuse and NTFS-3G drivers to read and write to NTFS formatted hard drives.

For Windows: HFSExplorer to read and wrtie to HFS formatted hard drives.
 
iEdd said:
Here's how it works... If the drive is:
HFS: Mac can read/write, PC can't do jack.
FAT32: Mac can read/write, PC can read/write.
NTFS: Mac can only read, PC can read/write.
Click to expand...

Thanks for clearing this up. I have an NTFS Seagate FreeAgent 320 GB external with tons of music on it. I'd like to copy some music off that drive onto my Penryn MBP...so hopefully I won't run into any problems?
 
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