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The New MacBook Air-My first Mac

Loonytik said:
Yes, Windows Vista machine to a MBA.

What 3 options?
Click to expand...

I don't know how tech savy you are. The problem is that your hard drive is formatted most likely with NTFS, the standard filesystem that Windows uses.

The filesystem is the way data is stored on your drive. It defines what folders you have on there, and what files, and where exactly on the drive the data inside the files is saved.

This NTFS filesystem is Microsoft proprietary and cannot be written to out-of-the-box by Mac OS. You can only see and open the files on it, but not store new stuff on it or delete anything basically.

You have 3 options:

1. Leave NTFS on the drive. It is a good filesystem in the Windows world. It ensures you staying compatible with Windows machines. However you have to install a 3rd party addon to your Mac OS that allows you to start writing, and performance isn't great. This is called MacFUSE.

2. Downgrade the drive to FAT32. I say downgrade because FAT32 has limits. It is older. It was the filesystem used in times of Windows 95 and 98 etc... The maximum file size is 4GB is one of it's biggest limits. However it is well supported both on Windows and on Mac OS out-of-the-box.

3. Reformat to HFS+. This is the native Mac OS filesystem. This would be the best choice if you decide to go all-Mac. However it breaks any compatibility with Windows. Windows can't even see this at all out-of-the-box. So if you ever want to use the hard drive with Windows you would have to install something on Windows to get it to work.

You have to choose ;)
 
hachre said:
I don't know how tech savy you are. The problem is that your hard drive is formatted most likely with NTFS, the standard filesystem that Windows uses.

The filesystem is the way data is stored on your drive. It defines what folders you have on there, and what files, and where exactly on the drive the data inside the files is saved.

This NTFS filesystem is Microsoft proprietary and cannot be written to out-of-the-box by Mac OS. You can only see and open the files on it, but not store new stuff on it or delete anything basically.

You have 3 options:

1. Leave NTFS on the drive. It is a good filesystem in the Windows world. It ensures you staying compatible with Windows machines. However you have to install a 3rd party addon to your Mac OS that allows you to start writing, and performance isn't great. This is called MacFUSE.

2. Downgrade the drive to FAT32. I say downgrade because FAT32 has limits. It is older. It was the filesystem used in times of Windows 95 and 98 etc... The maximum file size is 4GB is one of it's biggest limits. However it is well supported both on Windows and on Mac OS out-of-the-box.

3. Reformat to HFS+. This is the native Mac OS filesystem. This would be the best choice if you decide to go all-Mac. However it breaks any compatibility with Windows. Windows can't even see this at all out-of-the-box. So if you ever want to use the hard drive with Windows you would have to install something on Windows to get it to work.

You have to choose ;)
Click to expand...

Hard drives are cheap. Buy a 250GB drive for NFTS, move all your data to that one. Reformat your 2TB drive to HFS+, network the two together (see my earlier post) and transfer the data to your HFS+ drive. You have the best of both worlds and better than the 3 solutions mentioned here.

--Edit--

Sorry, just realized this was a second poster and not the OP. Still I believe your best bet is buying a new cheap hard drive.
 
Didn't mean to hijack...

Although I think my question was directly related to the OP.

I'll just buy a new drive and use it with the MBA instead of doing all the reformatting. I'll be keeping my windows machine anyway to dump files and hook up to my HDTV.

Thanks!
 
Well, went with the 13' Macbook Air with 4gigs of RAM/128GB

To not limit myself with FAT32, I just went ahead a purchased the external optical drive to transfer my 80gigs of iTunes media to the hard drive(and to have it just in case of emergencies..but I doubt it.) I have my iTunes library not only on the FAT32 external hard drive, but I have back up CD copies as well.

I'm going to get a HFS+ external hard drive (just don't know which kind...any ideas?) and then just consolidate my library and move everything over to the external hard drive.

For my documents and pictures, I'll just use my regular flash drive. The iTunes library is the most pressing issue right now. My documents and pictures barely take up 10gigs together.
 
Jumpman6 said:
I'm going to get a HFS+ external hard drive (just don't know which kind...any ideas?) and then just consolidate my library and move everything over to the external hard drive.
Click to expand...

There are certainly a lot of choices. You can get anything you like, as long as it is connected via USB, it will work fine. If it is preformatted for Windows you have to reformat it first to make full use of it (30 second task). You can also get a drive that is preformatted for Macs already. You can find them on the Apple Store online. You could also buy the USB casing without a drive and a standalone unformatted drive and put it into the case manually. Mac OS will ask you when you hook it up for the first time if you wanna go ahead and format it.
 
hachre said:
Since people seem to think reformatting is a terribly hard task I have made a small and short video guiding you through the steps. It is done on a USB stick which is originally formatted with NTFS (like a typical hard drive for Windows) and gets reformatted with Mac OS's native HFS+.

http://gallery.me.com/hachre#100483/How-20to-20format-20for-20Mac
Click to expand...

That's a good video tutorial of how to re-format the NTFS drive. The only thing is, I want to keep all of the files on my external drive, not erase them. Basically, I'm going to have to dump all of them somewhere else anyway and then re-format the drive and then dump them back.

Or, I could go buy another drive and be done.
 
Loonytik said:
That's a good video tutorial of how to re-format the NTFS drive. The only thing is, I want to keep all of the files on my external drive, not erase them. Basically, I'm going to have to dump all of them somewhere else anyway and then re-format the drive and then dump them back.

Or, I could go buy another drive and be done.
Click to expand...

Yea. True that :)
 
Ok, so I checked my external hard drive and see that it is formatted FAT32. So, both my new MBA(I just ordered my MBA 13/4GB/128SSD 5 mins ago)and my old Vista PC will be able to read and write to the same external drive? Right?
 
Loonytik said:
Ok, so I checked my external hard drive and see that it is formatted FAT32. So, both my new MBA(I just ordered my MBA 13/4GB/128SSD 5 mins ago)and my old Vista PC will be able to read and write to the same external drive? Right?
Click to expand...

Yes, however FAT32 has a limit of 4GB per file.
 
if you have a 2tb drive, but only 100g of files (from my understanding, reading the thread) why dont you make two partitions on your drive?

Half HFS+ / Half Fat32, thats what ive done on my 1tb drive, although its:

100gb - NTFS
800gb - fat32
 
MBA - My First Mac

Hi All!

I'm waiting for my MBA 13/4GB/128SSD also. It will be my first mac also.

I've read some posts with some early benchmarks and it seems a nice product. Not as fast as the latest MBP's but I guess it suits my needs.

Sorry to say but I'm tired of Windows. "Unix" like OS's is the way to go.

Let's see...
 
Install NTGS-3G for NTFS write support

Jumpman6 said:
Long time lurker, first time poster.
My question to the more informed is this; I have 80gigs worth of iTunes media, my pictures, and my documents all on a 2TB external hard drive.

Will said external hard drive be recognized by the Mac and thus run my iTunes media?
Click to expand...

OS X 10.6 can read and write FAT and FAT32. There is only read support for NTFS.

Just install NTGS-3G, which is free software, to get write support: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/ntfs3g.html
 
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