New to Mac's

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pawel

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Hi guys,

Having spent most of my life using PC's and have finally made the switch to Mac. I brought myself a new iMac dual core 2 duo a few days back and having not used osx EVER it is taking a little getting used to so I just have a couple of questions if you don't mind.

I have plugged in a usb extrenal harddrive and it only lets me read from it. I can't alter anything or add anything to it, why is this? I have searched but not having much luck.

Also I am looking for a good ftp transfer program, preferable free.

Many thanks
 
The hard drive, if you first used it on a PC, is most likely formatted in NTFS format -- which Mac OS X can only read, not write. Your only option is to get the data off the drive, re-format the drive as either FAT32 (if you want to use it with both Windows and Mac -- I don't recommend this), or HFS+ (which is the Mac's native format and unreadable by Windows computers). You can then restore the data to the drive, as well as be able to read and write to the drive.

A good FTP program would be Transmit (http://www.panic.com), but there's a fee... a good free FTP program is CyberDuck (http://cyberduck.ch).
 
Hi thanks for the fast response. Why would you not recommened fat32? also if I wanted to format HFS+ how would I do this?

Thanks for the links also ;)
 
I wouldn't recommend FAT32 because not all files in Mac OS X can be stored on a FAT32 volume correctly, due to odd characters in the filename or other various reasons. I prefer to keep my Mac system "purely Mac" and use the native formats when possible... this is only my preference, though, so that's why I recommend it. If you need to share files between a Mac and a PC, a network setup is much more efficient than lugging a hard drive back and forth.

To reformat as HFS+ (and formatting WILL destroy all data on the disk, so you may want to copy the files elsewhere before formatting), launch "Disk Utility" located in the "Utilities" folder (which is inside the "Applications" folder). Then, select your external hard drive in the left-hand sidebar, click the "Partiton" tab, select "1 Partition" and set the format to "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". Then, click "Partition" and the drive should reformat as HFS+. If the "Partitions" tab doesn't appear, make sure you've got the actual hard drive device selected... it'll be one of the the non-indented selections in the left-hand sidebar -- the list lists the device or disk first, then the partitions are listed as indented lines below the device. To repartition, you must select the "device" or "drive", not the indented "partition."
 
'Why ... not ... fat32?' - you can; however, you must abide by the file naming rules of fat32. Also, there will additional hassles when transferring some forms of Macintosh files to the fat32 formatted hard disk drive. To safely transfer the files, the files will need to compressed ('.sit', '.zip', etc.) first.

'Also I am looking for a good ftp transfer program, preferable free' - ...
01. To view, and possibly retrieve items from, a remote ftp site - use 'Finder'. Select 'Finder's 'Go, Go to Server...' menu item, enter a ftp url, and click on the 'Connect' button. Sadly, Apple Computer Inc. does not consider its Users competent (capable) enough - to allow the 'Go to Server...' feature to also send items (files and / or folders) to the remote ftp site.
02. Via 'Terminal' (yes, welcome to pre-1984), in the '/Applications/Utilities/' folder, one can use 'curl' for a variety of forms of data retrieval and sending. With 'curl' one can send and receive items via ftp.
03. 'Transmit' (shareware) and 'Cyberduck' (freeware) are nice graphical user interface type ftp applications; but, there are others, as well. Such as 'Fetch' (shareware) and those listed at Pure Mac (freeware and shareware).
 
fat32 is not the most modern of file-systems. it's very susceptible to fragmentation (if you're interested), and has the above-mentioned nuances about it's naming system. also, i don't think it can handle files bigger than 4096mb (4gb) in size.

HFS+ is very modern, will full character support, support for large files, it sorts files in a smart way, avoiding fragmentation almost entirely, and it's also supported by spotlight, so the drive will index quite happily, and be able to spotlight search.

but, HFS+ cannot be read by windows, without expensive software (macdrive)
 
Hi guys,

Many many thanks for all your useful and informative it really is lifesaving for me, and enlighting me the more I read.

I will consider all your advice and im sure ill be back for more very soon ;)

Thanks again.
 
Another quick question :)

Coming from a PC background I was firewalled/anti virused up to hell, do i need to get any type of protection software with a mac? I have heard it's no needed is this true?

Thanks
 
A router and a password-protected account provides ample protection for your Mac. As a good citizenship measure, antivirus software eliminates you as a transfer point for Windows viruses. However, it is worthless as a self-defense measure.
 
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