External HD's- From XP to OSX

[LightMast]

I have four external HD's filled with media (video/music) that are formatted NFTS and are currently used with XP. I would like to use them/have access to the files for editing/etc in the mac os. Is this possible?

What can I expect as far as compatibility with my forthcoming mac pro?

Thanks!

 

[Eraserhead]

Read access "should" work (though may have problems) write access won't happen you'll need to reformat as FAT to use with both Mac and PC (on a Mac you can make a partition over 32GB too)

 

[Luigi239]

Unfortunetly, OS X cannot read or write to NTFS. You would need to move all your info onto another hard drive, reformat the external to FAT32, and then re-move it all back to the external for Mac compatibility.

After that, you should be able to use all of your files, as long as they dont require a windows specific program.

EDIT: Hmm...maybe I'm wrong. Ive never tried an NTFS drive with OS X. Im sure about the write, but not the read.

I would still reformat as fat32 to make sure.

 

[yellow]

Unfortunetly, OS X cannot read or write to NTFS.

Untrue.

OS X can read NTFS formatted disks most of the time. Occasionally errors will occur.

While Apple states that OS X has "limited write capabilities" to NTFS, that pretty much means nonexistent write capabilities.

 

[Luigi239]

Untrue.

OS X can read NTFS formatted disks most of the time. Occasionally errors will occur.

While Apple states that OS X has "limited write capabilities" to NTFS, that pretty much means nonexistent write capabilities.

Yeah, I saw that from Eraserhead as soon as I posted mine. I edited it now.

Like I said, Its still a good idea to reformat as Fat32.

EDIT: I meant to say Fat32. ;( Me and the internet arn't getting allong today.

 

[yellow]

Yeah, I saw that from Eraserhead as soon as I posted mine. I edited it now.

Like I said, Its still a good idea to reformat as NTFS.

Not to pick on you, but I think you mean FAT32.

 

[Luigi239]

Not to pick on you, but I think you mean FAT32.

Heh, I can never win.

Stupid typos. Thanks for pointing that out anyway.

 

[yellow]

Heh, I can never win.

Stupid typos. Thanks for pointing that out anyway.

Well you got it right in the original spot anyway!

 

[LightMast]

So 32gb is the maximum file size in fat32? I thought it was 4gb.....hmmmm

 

[darkcurse]

I'm not sure whats happening, but it seems when i use MacOSX to format drives in FAT32, it can do what windows can't. It can format a 400GB HDD as one partition which can be viewed on windows no problems muahahaha. Mac rawks!

Edit: Ah, ok I just looked it up on wiki and it seems the theoretical limit for FAT32 is 8TiB. But Microsoft intentionally limited their implementation of FAT32 to 32GiB. So, using OSX's Disk Utility surpasses that MS imposed limit while still being under the theoretical limit. Neat!

 

[Eraserhead]

So 32gb is the maximum file size in fat32? I thought it was 4gb.....hmmmm

No the maximum file is 4GB on FAT32, but you can only format an FAT32 disk up to 32GB in Windows but you can format much larger disks (over 400GB as darkcurse has done) on a Mac.