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Switch from PC to Mac questions

Polekat

Polekat

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 13, 2010
268
31
My desktop died and the wife said to me "Maybe it's time to switch to a Mac". :) How can I argue with that logic? Anyway, I've never owned a Mac and I am thinking of picking up a MBP once tax returns come in, in a few months. Would I be able to connect my hard drives from my desktop PC through an enclosure so that I could recover the info on them?
 
Polekat said:
My desktop died and the wife said to me "Maybe it's time to switch to a Mac". :) How can I argue with that logic? Anyway, I've never owned a Mac and I am thinking of picking up a MBP once tax returns come in, in a few months. Would I be able to connect my hard drives from my desktop PC through an enclosure so that I could recover the info on them?
Click to expand...

Yes. The MAC will be able to read your FAT or NTFS hard drive data. Worked for me on all my drives.
 
Thank you. Any issues with going to laptop only household? I guess, aside from purchasing a wireless printer, if I wanted to print anything I'd just have to move the laptop to the printer and plug it in. I would probably also need a media server to store music, videos on and be able to stream them?

Does that sound right?
 
Polekat said:
Thank you. Any issues with going to laptop only household? I guess, aside from purchasing a wireless printer, if I wanted to print anything I'd just have to move the laptop to the printer and plug it in. I would probably also need a media server to store music, videos on and be able to stream them?
Click to expand...

We've been laptop only for three years now.

Our printer is a network color laser, wireless on the printer is not necessary as it's ethernet hardwired to the wireless router. Some routers offer a USB port to make a non-network printer wireless. YMMV depending on the printer and router.

I don't do any media streaming other than Pandora or Netflix (which we handle via Tivo or our bluray player), so that's not been something I've messed it.

I've recently resuscitated my old desktop as a fileserver to handle automated backups and such, but that's easily done with external drives if you can remember to do the backups. My intention is to offload those backups to externals to store offsite; thats a work in progress right now.
 
nizmoz said:
No he doesn't as it reads all of mine fine.
Click to expand...
Reads, but can't write.

NTFS (Windows NT File System)
  • Read/Write NTFS from native Windows.
  • Read only NTFS from native Mac OS X
  • To Read/Write/Format NTFS from Mac OS X: Install NTFS-3G for Mac OS X (free)
  • Some have reported problems using Tuxera (approx 33USD).
  • Native NTFS support can be enabled in Snow Leopard, but is not advisable, due to instability.
  • Maximum file size: 16 TB
  • Maximum volume size: 256TB
 
I just recently switched to Mac and I am using the NTFS-3G as mentioned above and it works great, no problem reading and writing to my NTFS external hard drives.
 
Hmmm, I beg to differ as I just backed up some stuff from my MAC onto that drive just fine.

GGJstudios said:
Reads, but can't write.

NTFS (Windows NT File System)
  • Read/Write NTFS from native Windows.
  • Read only NTFS from native Mac OS X
  • To Read/Write/Format NTFS from Mac OS X: Install NTFS-3G for Mac OS X (free)
  • Some have reported problems using Tuxera (approx 33USD).
  • Native NTFS support can be enabled in Snow Leopard, but is not advisable, due to instability.
  • Maximum file size: 16 TB
  • Maximum volume size: 256TB
Click to expand...
 
nizmoz said:
Hmmm, I beg to differ as I just backed up some stuff from my MAC onto that drive just fine.
Click to expand...

Then you either have NTFS-3G installed (via MacFuse) or another NTFS driver. Maybe you even activated the NTFS write capabilities of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, but right out of the box, Mac OS X can't write to NTFS formatted volumes, it can only read them.
 
nizmoz said:
Hmmm, I beg to differ as I just backed up some stuff from my MAC onto that drive just fine.
Click to expand...
Unless you use NTFS-3G or Tuxera or enable NTFS support in Snow Leopard, native Mac OS X can not write to NTFS-formatted drives. Check your facts.
 
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