Right now i'm running a dell w/ XP on it and my hard drive is about 98% full, needless to say i need more memory and have began to search for a good external hard drive. None of that is too dificult, however in about 5 or 6 months i'll be getting ready to go off to college for which i will be getting a Mac. someone told my if i load up a hard drive off my dell i won't be able to use any of the pictures, music, etc. stored on it w/ my mac. I figured since macs are running intel chips now and can run XP (i do plan on running leopard) there shouldn't be any problem with the exchange. Who's right? Thanks in advance.
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External Hard drive
- Thread starter vp719
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Transfering files from XP on an external HD will allow you to read them directly from OS X. If the HD is formatted in FAT32, then you'll also be able to write to that HD from OS X. Whoever told you that you wouldn't be able to use your pictures/music/files on a Mac, truly didn't know their a$$ from their elbow.
So whenever i get the HD i should just format in in FAT32 and i'll be fine? thanks
The drive should come as a FAT32 out the box. Manifacturers make it so that you can plug it into your system, be it a mac or pc, and be ready to go. One thing that you should watch out for is that if you restart your windows machine with the HD still on and plugged in, it might try to reformat it. Basically any HD (be it a FAT or NTFS) can be plugged into a Mac and the computer will read it. Your old HD will be fine once you plug it into your Mac (whenever you get it). Don't worry about reformatting a new HD, just dump your data, and then you should have no issues transferring it to your Mac. Cheers.