External Hard Drive Help...

L

l_eet

Registered
Hi Guys,

First time poster but this place has been SO SO useful since getting my macbook last year... (Thanks for all the posters!!!)

I'm trying to pull all my mp3 / pictures into one place (currently split between nice shiny fast mac... and old dusty useless windoze machine...)

I'm looking at getting an external hard drive in the hope that I can drag and drop from my winXP machine all of my mp3s etc... then plug it into my mac and access them (not transfer back just access)... however... I'm confused (male so doesnt take much...) some external drives say they are formatted for different OS's / some say they are mac ready / some say windows ready...

can someone please (please!!!) help me out here with what I need.. looking at between 350-500gb of storage required...

I've tried searching the forum but cannot find anything that really meets the answer I'm after...

Thanks in advance..
 
If you buy an Ext HD and hook it up to your Mac then format it as DOS (FAT32) then you can use it between your Mac and PC .... this is what I have done recently.
 
Hi there!

I'm new to MACS and I'm also looking for an external hard drive. I have a MacBook Pro and I've seent that the Seagate 500GB is recommended, although many people with MACs have problems.

I'm looking forward to seeing the responses...

Kam
 
Just hook up the ext drive and from Finder (Desktop) press Command + U to launch your Utilities Folder.

Then look for Disc Utility and fire that up.

Look at my image and you can see my ext drive in the left column and to the right is the Erase Tab section where there is a pull down menu that you can choose from.

MS-DOS is good for using your ext drive with both your Mac and your PC.



There might be some file size limitations with using MS-DOS (FAT32) but as I'm not 100% au fait on that I'll let someone more knowledgeable step up ... ;)
 
kam123 said:
Hi there!

I'm new to MACS and I'm also looking for an external hard drive. I have a MacBook Pro and I've seent that the Seagate 500GB is recommended, although many people with MACs have problems.

I'm looking forward to seeing the responses...

Kam
Click to expand...

I use a Seagate drive for my external. Fire wire is best connection imo.
I purchased a drive and a drive enclosure. This is more customized, but you can also get the pre-made ones. 500gb should be plenty. I use a 320 and have around 50 gb left.
 
A drawback is that you cannot put files over 4gb on FAT32. While it still may seem thats not a problem today, it will certainly be a problem in a couple years.

I say you partition it 90% FAT32, 5% Mac OS X Extended, 5% NTFS.
 
Well,

went out with intentions of partioning drives etc... got myself a western digital (used products of theres before and always found them pretty good) passport... 320gb (not as big as i was after but works for now)... plugin and works with both OS's - file transfers seem to be running nice and smooth and all seems well :)
 
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