advanced external hard drive questions

reaper

Registered
i have two important questions that i cant seem to get answers to and i figure people here might know (im in the market for an external hard drive).

1) can i use it to transfere files between a pc and a mac? (i've heard stuff about formatting it so its compatible with both and then reformatting it for optimal usage on just my mac, but dont know how/if this works).

2) Do external hd's without embedded processors use host resources? while shopping online ive seen a lot of hd's that brag about having embedded processors and not using host resources, but i've also been told that none do. can anyone clear this up for me?
 
You can use one external hard drive for both computers. Just one note about Windows and Mac. Windows XP like to format into a hard drive system of NTFS. OS X can only read files from an NTFS initialized hard drive, not write to it. The external hard that you need to format as is FAT32 so both the Windows computer and OS X Mac write both write to it.
 
Satcomer said:
You can use one external hard drive for both computers. Just one note about Windows and Mac. Windows XP like to format into a hard drive system of NTFS. OS X can only read files from an NTFS initialized hard drive, not write to it. The external hard that you need to format as is FAT32 so both the Windows computer and OS X Mac write both write to it.

thanks for the advice, you pretty sure about the accuracy of this info? sounds like you know what you're talking about. also, after i format once, i can always reformat it later right? and would fat32 be the optimal format if i were to just use the hd on a mac?
 
You can most always reformat any hard drive (as long as you have permission to). Shop around for the best price and remember to look to see if the hard drive you are buying has the cables included.

OS X likes HFS extended formatted hard drives.
 
One is "refurbished" meaning it was used but returned because someone had returned it but the company either verified it was good or fixed it.
 
reaper said:
2) Do external hd's without embedded processors use host resources? while shopping online ive seen a lot of hd's that brag about having embedded processors and not using host resources, but i've also been told that none do. can anyone clear this up for me?
Can you provide a link to a vendor that claims their hard drive uses an "embedded processor?"

The only reason I see to embed a processor in the case/hard drive is with an external enclosure that utilizes a RAID 0/1 -- two or more drives in the case. In this case, it would be very beneficial to have a hardware-based RAID, and, as such, the RAID controller would be embedded in the hard drive enclosure.
 
ElDiabloConCaca said:
Can you provide a link to a vendor that claims their hard drive uses an "embedded processor?"

The only reason I see to embed a processor in the case/hard drive is with an external enclosure that utilizes a RAID 0/1 -- two or more drives in the case. In this case, it would be very beneficial to have a hardware-based RAID, and, as such, the RAID controller would be embedded in the hard drive enclosure.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Submit=ENE&N=50010712&Manufactory=10712

about half of these say under features "High Performance embedded processor to reduce firmware overhead Dual (ping-pong) buffer to minimize bus latency Intelligent interface uses no host CPU resources to control/monitor time-consuming drive phases other than data transfer "


and this is the other one i was looking at which does not claim to have the above. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822101013
 
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