External Hard Drive Format Help!...

Discussion in 'Mac Basics and Help' started by thisisaustin, Apr 3, 2009.

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  1. thisisaustin, Apr 3, 2009

    thisisaustin macrumors newbie

    Joined:
    Mar 19, 2009
    #1
    Alright, so My ipod is formatted for windows... when formatted in this you can only copy chunks of 4 gig things using it as an external. but if you change the formatt of it to take all sizes, then it's not compatible with mac and pc. =/ i had it originally formatted for pc because i just recently got a mac book pro and it's my primary computer.

    well on to the hard drive trouble that is related... i'm borrowing my friends external to get a 8 gig file from my pc to my mac. it's formatted in fat32(windows and mac read) but that formatt only allows for a 4 gig max to be put on it at one time... so i guess i'm outta luck there, i've looked at JR split but who knows it that will work.

    My main q is, i'm going to be getting my own personal external soon and i want to know whats the best way to formatt it that it will mount on my pc and my mac and allow me to copy more that 4 gigs of stuff on it at a time!

    Please Help.
     
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  2. plinden, Apr 3, 2009

    plinden macrumors 68040

    plinden

    Joined:
    Apr 8, 2004
    #2
    I was going to tell you to google "format external drive for mac and pc" but I just did and there's a lot of bs out there.

    Just format it NTFS and install MacFUSE and NTFS-3g.

    Or, format it HFS+, keep it permanently connected to your Mac, and share it as a sharepoint using the Mac's built in file sharing. Then you can mount it as a network drive from the PC.

    But if you're just trying to copy files between your PC and your Mac, you can just turn on Windows file sharing on the Mac (I'm assuming you have a network set up) and mount the Mac's drive as a network drive in the PC.
     
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