Mobile Hard Drive - Mac?

[Pucas]

For Christmas i got this LaCie mobile hard drive
It's great for backup, and nice when i want to share the movies i make together with my friends at highschool. The only problem is; Windows users can't open it. And it seems pretty weird to me, because it says on the box:

Have any of you had the same problem? Or know how to solve it?

// Lucas

 

[tersono]

For Christmas i got this LaCie mobile hard drive
It's great for backup, and nice when i want to share the movies i make together with my friends at highschool. The only problem is; Windows users can't open it. And it seems pretty weird to me, because it says on the box:

Have any of you had the same problem? Or know how to solve it?

// Lucas

Depends on how you've got it formatted - Windows cannot read Mac-formatted drives. The answer is to format it FAT32, which both Windows and Mac can handle.

 

[robbieduncan]

The hardware itself will work with Windows or Mac. Whether it will mount (and whether it is read/write) will depend on the format you chose for the drive.

If it's HFS+ (default Mac format) a Windows PC cannot mount it without additional software
If it's NTFS your Mac cannot write to it without additional software
If it's FAT32 then both can mount and read/write.

 

[samh004]

However if you use FAT32 you wont be able to use it for Time Machine, although considering it's size I would guess you probably don't anyway.

Just remember if you reformat it, it'll delete everything on the disc, so take everything you want off first.

 

[Pucas]

Amazing how quick i got an answer!
- How to i reformat it to FAT32 ? 🙂

Btw. Thank you very much for your answers! 🙂

 

[unity]

And if you do re-format (using Disk Utility in the Utilities folder which is inside Applications) your drive performance will appear to take a big hit. File transfers will take much longer.

 

[Pucas]

But isn't it worth it?
I mean.. i also have a PC and also boot camp on my MB..
- Don't you guys think it is worth it?