Hardrive for Mac and PC

[fourtythree]

I have an external hardrive storing all my music and back up which i use for my Ibook. However I am now considering switching over to PC but desperately do not want to lose all my music and have to upload it again.

Does an external hardrive work on both? Will my music be accessible if i plug it into a PC?

Help!

 

[yellow]

No.. you have to puchase MacDrive to see that hard drive on a PC.
Or, copy everything off and reformat it as FAT32 and then copy it all back.

 

[fourtythree]

do you mean copy it all back onto my mac ibook and then when i copy it off copy it in that format? then it will be usable with a pc?

 

[prostuff1]

do you mean copy it all back onto my mac ibook and then when i copy it off copy it in that format? then it will be usable with a pc?

What yellow is saying is that you need to copy the music onto the internal HD of the iBook then after that is complete use Disk Utility to reformat the exteranl as a FAT32 drive. Form there you can copy the music back and it can be read on a mac or a windows computer.

 

[Temujin]

You could go with FAT32, but doing so will prevent the use of files exceeding the 4 Gb mark. An Apple formatted drive would not be flawed by this obstacle.

I use MacDrive with my Apple formatted external drive when I need to acces the thing from a Windows machine. Works great, never had any problems.

Install the app on your Windows box and access what ever you need.

Macdrive has a trial period of 5 days. So if you only need the one transfer you can do this at no expense.

Edit: Oh and you wouldn't have to reformat anything