Transferring Music between Apple Mac Snow Leopard and Windows PC

[ajay0310]

Hi All

I have a Mac Air with Snow Leopard and a Winows 7 PC. I want to mirror my Itunes on both so that I can sync my Iphone with either. I backed up my Itunes Folder on a Free Agent (External Hard Drive). My Free Agent is detected on Mac Air but is not detected on Windows 7 PC.

I have very recently moved to Mac so am at a loss and seek your kind help.

Cheers

Ajay

 

[wrldwzrd89]

The problem is almost certainly the drive format/partition scheme. Windows won't recognize drives partitioned with the APM (Apple Partition Map) scheme at all, nor will it be able to see drives formatted as something other than FAT32 or NTFS. FAT32 is easier to work with, as both Mac OS X and Windows can read and write to it. However, if you have any files bigger than 4GB you won't be able to put them on the external drive. NTFS overcomes that limitation, but is not natively writable on Mac OS X - you need a third-party tool such as NTFS-3G (free) or Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X (not free) to enable write support.

 

[ajay0310]

The problem is almost certainly the drive format/partition scheme. Windows won't recognize drives partitioned with the APM (Apple Partition Map) scheme at all, nor will it be able to see drives formatted as something other than FAT32 or NTFS. FAT32 is easier to work with, as both Mac OS X and Windows can read and write to it. However, if you have any files bigger than 4GB you won't be able to put them on the external drive. NTFS overcomes that limitation, but is not natively writable on Mac OS X - you need a third-party tool such as NTFS-3G (free) or Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X (not free) to enable write support.

Thanks Wrldwzrd89.

Which of the 2 will you recommend? So if I use these, then I can copy from mac to Windows?

 

[wrldwzrd89]

Thanks Wrldwzrd89.

Which of the 2 will you recommend? So if I use these, then I can copy from mac to Windows?

Since you're just transferring music, and unlikely to hit the 4GB file limit, I'd go with FAT32.

 

[arjen92]

I wonder whether this will work (syncing your iphone to 2 computers). If you have it to full sync it will or sync with your macbook air, or with your windows 7 pc. It will get the same amount but will cost you a lot of time. (cause it will delete your iphone all the timeand put everything back from the computer. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I guess you can't sync with 2 libraries, except by selecting doing it manual (so you would have to drag everything, and it will not "officially" be in sync with even one library (although the content is).

 

[ajay0310]

You are right Arjen

I wonder whether this will work (syncing your iphone to 2 computers). If you have it to full sync it will or sync with your macbook air, or with your windows 7 pc. It will get the same amount but will cost you a lot of time. (cause it will delete your iphone all the timeand put everything back from the computer. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I guess you can't sync with 2 libraries, except by selecting doing it manual (so you would have to drag everything, and it will not "officially" be in sync with even one library (although the content is).

Hi Arjen

Thanks. You are right. My challenge is that I have my Itunes account authorized over 4 PCs and 3 of them are Windows PC. Hence, what I am trying to figure out is how to move the downloaded music to other 3 Windows PC from my Mac. I have a Free Agent drive but because of file format issues, my windows PC do not recognize that drive at all.

Any suggestions? I will try what World Wizard has advised.

Cheers

Ajay