I’ve been giving serious thought to buying a Macbook. I’m tired of all the problems I’ve been having with my pc laptop and I’ve heard it’s very difficult to get viruses/spyware etc with Mac’s OS.
I have a portable external hard-drive that I formated with Windows. If I were to buy an Apple, would I have to re-format it so it could work with the Macbook? Or, does it not matter which kind of OS one used to format an external hard drive?
Thanks!
Did you format it with NTFS or FAT? If it is FAT then you will be able to use it with just about any OS. If it is NTFS then you will need to be running a recent version of Mac OS X and even then it will still be read-only. The same applies to NTFS support in Linux and other Unix derivatives (though for them you can set an option to make it read-write, but you’ve got a good chance of scrambling something). Microsoft isn’t good about documenting how NTFS actually works, so third part implementations aren’t very good.
What jlick said. Here’s a guide explaining the differences between the different formats. In short, you should go with Apple’s HFS+
If you keep all of your stuff on one external drive, you should back it up to a second drive, both to protect from losing data from a physical failure as well as borking it yourself from fiddling around with things. So if you do decide to go with a Macbook (which are really sweet machines), you could buy a second hard drive, format that one to HFS+, plug in your Windows-formatted hard drive, copy the files over to the HFS+ hard drive, make a second copy of the very important stuff to the Macbook hard drive, format the Windows drive to HFS+, and then copy everything over again.
I use LaCie Silverkeeper to do all of my syncing between external drives. It’s free and works well.
If you’re only going to use it on Mac OS X, then sure. However, if there is any chance at all that you’ll use the drive on any other computer, then FAT format is the only thing that’ll work completely on just about everything you can plug the drive into. Sure, it’s a cruddy old primitive file system, but that’s often a lot better than not working at all.
panicking
gosh, i have NO IDEA how i formatted it. I just remember it was a mission and took me days and many posts on this forum before i finally figured it out. It was with XP… via computer management. i don’t recall there being an option… FAT or NTFS.
so, er… will I be ABLE to re-format it with a Macbook? I mean, if i plug it in what would happen? I don’t want to have to buy another portable external hard-drive and I would like for it to work with windows and OS X.
:help:
Yes… though if you reformat any files on it will be gone.
How big is it, busibanned? If it’s over 40GB, and not divided into two or three partitions, you can be sure it’s formatted as NTFS (and Windows wouldn’t even have given you a choice about that probably).
forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopi … 623#534623
Looks like you formatted it as NTFS if you followed irishstu’s advice.
Yes… though if you reformat any files on it will be gone.[/quote]
PHEEEEEWWW!! Losing files would be ok… as long as i don’t have to buy another one.
but… if i save files via the mac… no way they’ll open in windows, right?
ugh. dunno what to do…
Yes… though if you reformat any files on it will be gone.[/quote]
PHEEEEEWWW!! Losing files would be ok… as long as i don’t have to buy another one.
but… if i save files via the mac… no way they’ll open in windows, right?
ugh. dunno what to do…[/quote]
OK, don’t panic. If you format it as FAT32, as jlick said, you will ba able to add files from Windows or Mac, and see them on Windows or Mac. No problems there. I suspect your drive is not currently FAT32 though, so you will probably have to format it as such. I also suspect you will have to partition the drive to be allowed to do that though. Biggest partition for FAT32 is something like 32GB. There is probably a thread about partitioning here somewhere. it’s not as scary as you would think, but you will need instructions. Luckily for you, it’s MUCH easier than it used to be.
[quote=“bushibanned”]but… if i save files via the mac… no way they’ll open in windows, right?
ugh. dunno what to do…[/quote]
Format as FAT and it’ll work on both. Only hitch is you’ll need to split things into 32gb partitions unless you have a special formatter which can make bigger FAT partitions (XP’s tools won’t).
By the way, here’s a tool to format large drives with FAT32 without needing to make tiny partitions:
Plug in any FAT or NFTS drive and it magically appears in OS X. It’s also a bit more obvious how to format on a Mac. Plug in a brand new, unformatted drive and the disk utility automatically pops up, asking you to initialize the disk. But as others have said, if you want to reformat a drive you already use (which again is very easy), you’ll need to erase the stuff already on it.
One annoying thing about OS X is that if you plug in some FAT32 drive like a USB thumbdrive, OS X will create a bunch of wacky .DS files in all of the directories to help out with some of the services in OS X like Spotlight. You won’t see this when it’s plugged in on a Mac, but you’ll see it when you plug it back into a Windows machine.
I only have my Macbook Pro with two external drives formatted in HFS+ holding my data, and for the times I want to occassonally transfer stuff between my computer and a Windows computer at work, I just use a thumbdrive to move stuff back and forth and it works fine. If you wanted to use this hard drive between a Windows and OS X machine you already have, there are also Windows utilities you can get to read HFS+.
[quote]I don’t want to have to buy another portable external hard-drive and I would like for it to work with windows and OS X.
PHEEEEEWWW!! Losing files would be ok… as long as i don’t have to buy another one. [/quote]
I wish I could understand this reasoning. A second hard drive would cost ~NT1000 for the case and ~NT2000 for a 250gig drive. Pretty small expenditure compared with $35k for the low-end Macbook (and I would recommend going with the higher end Macbook at $45k). And an absolute drop in the bucket considering how all the stuff on your drive is either irreplaceable (pictures, old school papers) or a real pain in the ass to replace (MP3s, midget porn), or at least is for me.
I would rather lose all of my computer and camera gear than lose my old pictures.
I paid close to 4000NT at 3C for my 60GB portable external hard drive (including the case). I would like to NOT lose anything. In fact, I’d like to just keep my little portable thingy the way it is and not have to futz with re-formatting. I want to be able to plug it into a Macbook (should I buy one, and yes, i’d go for the 45,900NT one) and have it work they same way as it does now, with my PC. I don’t know nutin’ about all this FAT, NTFS, HFS+, shnergiggabittybooboo computer lingo. Me wants to plug and go… no changie. Is it possible? Or will a Macbook read my external hard-drive as a Windows thing cause that’s what it was formatted with? of course it will… sigh… so all my pictures and music that has been saved on my hard-drive using Windows will be worth sob all on a MAc and I’ll have to reformat the thing and lose it all. 
So i’ve been poking around the apple site and found this:
If you’re ready to move from your Windows PC to Mac, you’ll need to overcome what may seem like daunting task: transferring all your files between computers. But it doesn’t have to be difficult. If you have an external hard drive or a PC with a CD/DVD burner, you’re about half way home already. That’s because your new Mac can read discs and hard drives formatted for Windows without any problem.
[b]Step 2: Prepare your drives
Using a hard drive
If your external hard drive is brand new, you don’t need to do anything to it other than make sure it’s formatted and ready to work with your PC. If it already contains files that you want to keep, just be sure there’s enough space available to copy other files from your PC’s main hard drive. To determine how much space is available, follow these steps:
Connect it to your PC.
On your Windows desktop, double-click “My Computer” and find the icon for the external drive.
Right-click on the drive icon and choose “Properties.”
Click the “General” tab make a note of how much hard drive space is available.[/b]
http://www.apple.com/macosx/switch/howto/dvd.html
So I guess I’m good to go! mind you… says it can read files no problem… but it’a matter if those files will still work!