External HDD

[discodicky]

Kinda new to macs and i was after a bit of advice. I've filled up the HDD on my ibook and I've made the decision to get an external drive. I currently have a unused windows pc with a 160gb HDD. I'm planning on getting a FW caddy and using that as my new external drive. Just wondered if there are complications of which i should be aware

Many thanks

 

[livingfortoday]

Kinda new to macs and i was after a bit of advice. I've filled up the HDD on my ibook and I've made the decision to get an external drive. I currently have a unused windows pc with a 160gb HDD. I'm planning on getting a FW caddy and using that as my new external drive. Just wondered if there are complications of which i should be aware

Many thanks

You'll probably have to reformat the drive in order for you to be able to read and write to it. I believe Macs can't write to NTFS drives, only read from them. It should be easy, though, just plug it in, open Disk Utility, and "erase" as a Mac OS drive. And done!

 

[MRU]

You'll probably have to reformat the drive in order for you to be able to read and write to it. I believe Macs can't write to NTFS drives, only read from them. It should be easy, though, just plug it in, open Disk Utility, and "erase" as a Mac OS drive. And done!

Yep it is that simple and be prepared for quick formats, it will literally only take a couple of seconds

 

[discodicky]

Thanks for allaying my fears. Just need to turn my ibook into a PVR now

 

[janey]

You'll probably have to reformat the drive in order for you to be able to read and write to it. I believe Macs can't write to NTFS drives, only read from them. It should be easy, though, just plug it in, open Disk Utility, and "erase" as a Mac OS drive. And done!

there's very very basic ntfs write support. not recommended though, if it even works.

 

[trainguy77]

there's very very basic ntfs write support. not recommended though, if it even works.

Where did you hear this? OS X by default can only read NTFS. There is others apps you can buy to let you write to NTFS, but just os x can't.