Seagate Slim or WD Ultra? (PC to Mac)

[helmut89]

1. I have an old PC running 32 bit windows 7 with 200gb of data I want to extract.
2. Most of this is music,pdfs, power points, and regular res. video. Only a few individual files are above 4gb.
3. I want to backup this data onto a portable hard-drive and plan on transferring it onto a MacBook with 256gb flash storage(when I buy one).

At my local target the Seagate Slim 1TB is on sale for 70. The WD Ultra 1tb costs 80.

Is WD's encryption feature(the reviewers say it offers this while seagate doesn't) relevant only if I intend to use Windows exclusively?

 

[iMacBooked]

I really like my Seagate Slim, I'd definitely recommend it. I think WD is more meant for Windows users anyway.

 

[Weaselboy]

1. I have an old PC running 32 bit windows 7 with 200gb of data I want to extract.
2. Most of this is music,pdfs, power points, and regular res. video. Only a few individual files are above 4gb.
3. I want to backup this data onto a portable hard-drive and plan on transferring it onto a MacBook with 256gb flash storage(when I buy one).

At my local target the Seagate Slim 1TB is on sale for 70. The WD Ultra 1tb costs 80.

Is WD's encryption feature(the reviewers say it offers this while seagate doesn't) relevant only if I intend to use Windows exclusively?

Yes... that WD software is for Windows and not relevant for OS X.

There is zero difference between the two. Just get whichever is cheapest.

Format it to ExFAT so Windows can write to the drive and that will get around the FAT32 4GB file size limit. OS X can also read/write ExFAT. Then once you have all your data off the drive and onto your new MacBook, reformat the drive to the Mac OS Extended format for use on your Mac.

 

[thedeske]

I love it when a company marks a silly low end drive "For Mac" "For Windows"

"For Kids" would be more accurate

 

[Boyd01]

Are you talking about the MyPassport Ultra? I recently got one of those on sale at Best Buy, but I have the 500gb version since I only use it to clone my 512gb MBA. It is reasonably fast for an inexpensive bus-powered USB drive, I clocked it around 110 MB/s IIRC.

I re-formatted it for MacOSX Journaled.

 

[helmut89]

Yes... that WD software is for Windows and not relevant for OS X.

There is zero difference between the two. Just get whichever is cheapest.

Format it to ExFAT so Windows can write to the drive and that will get around the FAT32 4GB file size limit. OS X can also read/write ExFAT. Then once you have all your data off the drive and onto your new MacBook, reformat the drive to the Mac OS Extended format for use on your Mac.

I picked up the seagate 1tb. It's my understanding that exfat is designed specifically for flash storage which doesn't approach 1tb of storage. The macbook pro retina runs flash anyway. So format it to exfat, write it, and then transfer <256gb to a mbp retina?

What are the drawbacks of using exfat vs fat32? What is fat32+?

Is the fat system only read-only on Mac?

 

[Weaselboy]

I picked up the seagate 1tb. It's my understanding that exfat is designed specifically for flash storage which doesn't approach 1tb of storage. The macbook pro retina runs flash anyway. So format it to exfat, write it, and then transfer <256gb to a mbp retina?

What are the drawbacks of using exfat vs fat32? What is fat32+?

Is the fat system only read-only on Mac?

I really don't know much about FAT32+. But FAT32 and ExFAT are read/write in Windows and Mac. Other than ExFAT overcoming the 4GB file limit, I am not aware of other advantages.

But yes, you can copy your data to the ExFAT drive then move it to your Mac with no problems.

The downside to FAT32 and ExFAT is they are not "journaled", so if there is a power drop or any glitch during a file transfer, the whole disk can get corrupted.

 

[helmut89]

I really don't know much about FAT32+. But FAT32 and ExFAT are read/write in Windows and Mac. Other than ExFAT overcoming the 4GB file limit, I am not aware of other advantages.

But yes, you can copy your data to the ExFAT drive then move it to your Mac with no problems.

The downside to FAT32 and ExFAT is they are not "journaled", so if there is a power drop or any glitch during a file transfer, the whole disk can get corrupted.

The Seagate is pre-formatted to ntfs out of the box. Seagate offers a ntfs driver for Mac. I think that driver will allow to read-write everything I've put on this portable Seagate HDD on Windows.

 

[Weaselboy]

The Seagate is pre-formatted to ntfs out of the box. Seagate offers a ntfs driver for Mac. I think that driver will allow to read-write everything I've put on this portable Seagate HDD on Windows.

That would work in theory. I have no experience with that Seagate NTFS driver or if it is compatible with Mavericks though. You might want to research that a bit.

If you were doing this over and over long term, the NTFS route might be better (assuming the driver works okay), but for a one time then erase thing, I would just go with ExFAT so you don't have to install any drivers in OS X.