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pc drive on a mac

F

fixed up north

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 10, 2003
2
0
I have a pc external hard drive that I have ripped all of my CDs onto as MP3s for listening purposes. I used to run it through a PC laptop hooked up to my stereo, but because of an apartment shift, I want to run it through a Mac with OS9. Do I have to reformat the drive, or will it read it? I have hooked it up and the Mac appears to not recognize it all. I am brand new to Macs and my roommate is pretty unhelpful, even though it is his machine. Thanks in advance for any help.

I just had another idea, what about hooking the hard drive up to my PC in my bedroom, and sharing the files over the wireless network. I just hooked the wireless up yesterday and I am not very savvy so if this is my best bet, I would love some quick advice. Thanks again.
 
Sharing across your wireless is about the way to go.

I don't think Mac OS will support mounting a hard drive locally with a non-Apple filesystem on it (i.e. anything other than Mac Extended).
 
Sharing is one way.

A program called MacDrive (runs on windows) allows a Windows computer to read Mac harddrives (especially usefull for USB or FireWire drives) I believe, though, that the drive is first formatted in Mac FS and then the PC handles it like any other drive. If there was a Mac counterpart, it would solve your problems.
 
Mac OS 7 could even mount PC-formatted disks... come on guys... Just plug that baby into your Mac. Even if it doesnt work, it cant do any harm.
 
Originally posted by crazzyeddie
Mac OS 7 could even mount PC-formatted disks... come on guys... Just plug that baby into your Mac. Even if it doesnt work, it cant do any harm.
Click to expand...

:D :D :D

I bought a 20 dollar CD burner at staples and it worked fine, I love OS X and its compatibility. As for 9, it should still work
 
If it matters, the hard drive is formatted NFTS. The Mac might be reading the drive, but there is no icon on the desktop (if that is what it is called on a Mac). Will it automatically show up, like on XP, or do I need to do something? Thanks.
 
Oh well I'm fairly certain Macs don't read NTFS natively (not sure because I think they DO read HDFS). If thats the case, I think the only way to get files off it is to share over wireless.
 
OS 9 and OS 10.2 won't recognise an NTFS drive, and Panther reportedly can read NTFS but not write to it. If you really need to physically connect the drive to the Mac you can use PowerQuest Parition Magic 8.0 to convert it to Fat32 which the Mac can recognise (probably what crazzyeddie was referring to), but this can be unreliable and you risk corrupting your files. The wireless option is definitely the way to go.
 
call me crazy but all you need to read essentially any PC formatted disk is a little control panel called "PC Exchange" (which is, i believe, installed by default).

right?

i have a USB drive (formatted in Ms-DOS format) that i used in os 9. i thought that was all there is to it
 
It's a bit more complicated than that. There are different PC disk formats, and your drive must be in Fat32 which the Mac can recognise. NTFS incorporates a form of journaling which makes it unreadable by the Mac, but as I said earlier, Panther will be able to see these drives, just not write to them.
 
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