External hard drive compatibility

[sealed]

I ordered an iMac G5 last Saturday, and according to package tracking, it is scheduled for delivery tomorrow. I am switching from a PC laptop with a 300 GB external hard drive. Currently it is an NTFS formatted drive.

I am wondering about the best solution for getting the external HD to work with the Mac. At this point, I think I am going to back up all my data and try to convert it to FAT32 with Partition Magic so I can use it with the Mac and the PC if needed. In this situation, FAT32 is not the most efficient when it comes to speed, from what I have read. Is the speed really that noticable?

I have considered converting to HFS or HFS+, but it is apparently not compatible with a Windows platform. And of course, if I keep the drive in NTFS, the Mac will not be able to write to it.

I realize that I could potentially write to an NTFS drive from the Mac by setting up a network server, but that is not a course of action I want to take.

Given my situation what would you guys suggest is the best solution?

 

[Counterfit]

There are a variety of ways to get Windows to work with HFS/HFS+ drives. Such as MacDrive.

 

[blodwyn]

FAT32 is the (free) way to go. I don't think that any speed differences will be that prevalent. Don't know if you can get a 300Gb single FAT32 partition though, maybe have to split up into smaller partition sizes?

 

[JOD8FY]

Go with FAT32. As you said, it's compatible with both platforms. Not sure about speed differences between the formats, but I would assume it's difficult to notice.

Good luck and congratulations on the new Mac,
JOD8FY