Best way to get external hdd up and running?

[BadboyHouse]

I've got an external hard drive which I use for storing my digital comics collection on. It's an ntfs formatted drive, 250gb in size, with about 175gb used.

I just got my MacBook Pro, and previously used the drive on my windows xp system.

What's the best way to access the files on the MBP?

I won't need to use it on a windows system any more, so as long as I can copy the files somewhere temporarily, I can format the drive as hfs.

I've not got a drive big enough, other than the MBP 500gb drive, that I can copy the files to temporarily.

My initial thoughts would be to copy the files to the MBP, format the drive, then copy the files back to the external hdd.

Any suggestions?

 

[blodwyn]

I've got an external hard drive which I use for storing my digital comics collection on. It's an ntfs formatted drive, 250gb in size, with about 175gb used.

I just got my MacBook Pro, and previously used the drive on my windows xp system.

What's the best way to access the files on the MBP?

My initial thoughts would be to copy the files to the MBP, format the drive, then copy the files back to the external hdd.

Any suggestions?

OS X should read drives that are formatted with NTFS, but will not write to NTFS without some additional software. You should therefore be able to plug the drive into your MBP and copy the files off as you thought.

 

[BadboyHouse]

Cheers. That's working fine!

 

[-tWv-]

If you want to leave it as ntfs format and still use it with the mac, download NTFS-3G. This is a drive that gives your mac read/write capabilities for windows formatted drives. I use it all the time and it has worked for me for over two years with no issues.