My best option for my new lacie external drive ntfs of fat 32?

[polopinojoe]

OK so I did some research already... I am new to mac I just bought a new iMac and a new Lacie 1tb external harddrive. I first tried to use Target Disk Mode and transfer my media files from my pc to my iMac although that didn't work my pc did not see the mac as a firewire drive. I would really just like to keep my media files on my lacie external harddrive but I would have to reformat my lacie drive to ntfs or fat 32 first just to put them on there... what is my best option here?
p.s. My imac will be my main computer after the transfer of files is complete so do I need to refomat to HFS afterwards?

[chscag]

How about this:

Use the disk manager utility from Windows and divide the 1TB drive into two partitions of 500 Gb each. Leave the first partition as raw (unformatted) and format the second partition as FAT-32. Hook the drive to your Mac and format the first partition of the drive as HFS +.

Now you can copy your media files from the PC to the FAT-32 partition of the drive. Your Mac can read and write to FAT-32 so the transfer will be straight forward. The first partition of the drive once formatted to HFS + can be used as a backup drive for Time Machine.

Note: Without third party software, Mac OS X can only read NTFS, not write.
Windows - without third party software, can neither read nor write to HFS +.

Once all your files are transferred to the Mac, you can continue to use the external drive for storage (FAT-32 partition) and for backing up your Mac with Time Machine (HFS+ partition). Or, if the FAT-32 partition is no longer needed just reformat the entire drive as HFS+.

Regards.

[afsandiego]

I agree with chscag..
Just a heads up with Fat32, if you have a single file that is bigger than 4gb(i.e. rip dvds) then you wouldnt be able to transfer this file to the fat32 partition.

[showtime]

You could leave the drive as fat32 and copy all your media files (as long as no file exceeds 4gb) to the hard drive and over to your mac. If you do have files larger than 4GB you'll have to either compress it or think of another way to move it.

If you have windows installed on your mac you could just boot into windows and copy the file onto your windows partition and drag and drop from there.

[agentphish]

or you could use a router/network to move all the files too. It's just another option. File sizes won't matter at all then, and you can leave your Lacie formatted HFS+

All you have to do is enable file sharing on the mac in the System preferences under SHARING. And you should be able to navigate to it on the windows machine by simply typing \\192.168.1.100 (assuming thats how your router assigns IP addresses to the computers that are hooked to it)

You should then be prompted for your username and password.

Enter your full mac username and your password and bingo.

You can also map your Mac as a network drive in Windows as well if you are familiar w/ how to do that.

[polopinojoe]

I don't think i'd want to partition my drive since it'll just used for my imac anyways. thanks for the options though. I would just like to know if you recommend using "macdrive"? or if you have ever used it to transfer files to a hfs drive from windows. and would this be another option for me?

[agentphish]

I'd go the route I suggested, especially if you don't want to partition the drive. Just do the network. It'll be your best option.