Transferring files from a MacBook to a Windows laptop using Maxtor OneTouch III.

[Alqarine]

Recently, the LCD screen on my MacBook broke (yes, ouch) and I can't really afford to fix it but I need the files so I tried transferring most of the important stuff onto my external hard drive (a Maxtor OneTouch III 80GB drive, as mentioned in the title) by using this little part of the screen that wasn't damaged.

Since no one else in my household uses a Mac, I've been using a Windows laptop. But when I try to connect the hard drive to any Windows computer, it isn't detected. I think it might have to do with the formatting of the drive, but I have no idea how to go about it - if I reformat the drive so it'll be compatible with Windows, all the files will be erased and I can't go back to my Mac and re-transfer stuff because then it'd no longer be compatible with my Mac.

I'm not really much of a tech wiz, can anyone help?

 

[eyebeaz]

To clear thinhs up a little bit, you can format a drive to FAT32 which is readable by both Mac and PC. But yes if you re-format you will loose all those files. What if you reformat the drive to FAT32, and then re-copy the files onto the drive, seeing as you were able to do so with the part of the screen that isn't damaged.

 

[Alqarine]

To clear thinhs up a little bit, you can format a drive to FAT32 which is readable by both Mac and PC. But yes if you re-format you will loose all those files. What if you reformat the drive to FAT32, and then re-copy the files onto the drive, seeing as you were able to do so with the part of the screen that isn't damaged.

Thank you!

...any idea how to do the formatting, however?

 

[nownot]

i would imagine the disk utility. hook it up open disk utility click the erase tab and pick fat 32.

 

[Alqarine]

i would imagine the disk utility. hook it up open disk utility click the erase tab and pick fat 32.

Cool, thanks. It's taken me forever to get around to it but tomorrow I'll be heading down to my cousin's place to use her Mac to reformat my hard drive, then I'll finally be able to transfer my files yay.

 

[eyebeaz]

Yea you use Disk Utility and select the erase tab, and to format it to FAT32 you select MS-DOS file system.