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Switching to Mac from Windows: Data Transfer Help Needed

X

xSOTYx

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 20, 2007
56
0
United Kingdom
Hey! I am going to be purchasing a new iMac 20" next week, and as we have a bank holiday weekend I am going to use this time to sort out my data ready for my Mac. I have just had a Iomega MiniMax 500GB hard drive delivered. It has come formatted for Mac and includes software etc.

Now it says it needs to be formatted for use with Windows, this is where I have a problem and need some help. I was hoping that although it was formatted to Mac id still be able to access the drive on Windows and transfer my 300+ GB's of music, pictures and video across, although this is not the case. So what do I do?! If I was to format the hard drive to Windows, would it not be usable on the Mac?! I really need all this data and would really appricate some help on how I can get my data transfer over ready.

Thanks.:)
 
What do you mean?! I can't store a single file bigger than 4GB?

EDIT: In the instructions it says 'To use the drive with other operating systems, use the Iomega FAT32 Formatter located on the CD to chaneg the format to FAT 32 (needed for cross platform compatibilty).
 
xSOTYx said:
What do you mean?! I can't store a single file bigger than 4GB?

EDIT: In the instructions it says 'To use the drive with other operating systems, use the Iomega FAT32 Formatter located on the CD to chaneg the format to FAT 32 (needed for cross platform compatibilty).
Click to expand...

The maximum possible size for a file on a FAT32 volume is 4 GB minus 1 Byte
Click to expand...
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat32#FAT12

under fat32
 
You could format it as an NTFS drive. Then transfer everything from the drive to the Mac and re-format it as HFS+ when you're done and use it as a back-up.

You could also partition it and make an NTFS partition for the files over 4gb and a FAT32 partition for the rest.

Or you could just get the free trial of MacDrive and not have to re-format it at all. ;)

http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/freetrial/default.asp
 
Wait, how many single files over 4 gb do you have? Much rather what are they? I knew there were some limitations to FAT32 but didn't think they'd be too much of an issue.

NTFS can be read by Macs. Oh yeah, I always forget the rules on that format.
 
Yes, do you really have any single files that are 4GB or more? I don't think I have anything even close. I suppose a large video file would be that much... If not, doing the FAT32 formatting should work.

You could format as NTFS and then copy the files to your Mac. Mac OS X can just read or copy from NTFS, though, and would not be able to delete, move, or save to the NTFS. (see this related thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/344171/)
 
First off thank you all for your help!

I think that FAT way is sounding good, most of my data is music and video. Also I can never recall having a single file of 4GB or over, plus this way I can still swap music and files etc with my friends on Windows.

Thanks again! :)
 
When I switched to Mac, I formatted my external HD to NTFS, copied over the data I wanted from my old Windows box to it, then copied it from the external HD to the Mac and it worked just fine. Once I had the data switched over, I re-formatted it to OSX Extended and now everything is hunky-dory on it.
 
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