PC to Mac Harddrive

[Etoh*the*Greato]

Alright, so... I would like to use something as a portable hard drive. It's started out as a slave media drive to a PC. I would like to use the data on it on my Mac. Do I need to format first, then reload the data once it's on the mac?

[Mr. SmartyPants]

Nope, a portable harddrive is cross-platform. You should be fine.

[Kenshin17]

Yeah OS X can read disks fine. Just make sure the drive isn't in NTFS format. If it is OS X will only be able to read it, not write to it. If you want OS X to be able to read and write it has to be in FAT or FAT32.

[blkmage]

Pretty much everything can read and write FAT32.

Windows is pretty much the worst when it comes to file system support. It only reads FAT32 and NTFS. I'm so used to being able to read almost anything plugged into my Mac or Linux boxes that I forgot that I'd formatted my external HD as HFS and tried to give something to my friend.

[Kenshin17]

lol Yeah Unix and its dirivatives can just do more.

FAT or FAT32 is the best for External drives. Anything can read it. Go with FAT32.

[Etoh*the*Greato]

well, it was originally formatted for windows then, so it should be fine. I was asking because I've been running Karaoke at my convention for several years now, but always on my PC. this year, I thought I'd save a hassle and take my new laptop instead. Buddy's got a lil box to convert my HD in to an external so I can take all my music along.

[Etoh*the*Greato]

Alright, here's the latest. Yes, my Mac can see the hard drive. I can see the stuff in it. I can play the music I need to play, but I can't delete or add anything. Any ideas?

[Kaligraphic]

If you set it up originally under Windows, you probably formatted it as NTFS.

[Etoh*the*Greato]

No way to change that outside of formatting? I mean, yeah, I've still got the desktop if I need to add or subtract stuff, and I can still use the music on my Laptop, so it isn't that big of a deal...

[Kaligraphic]

Not in the direction you want to go.

[Kenshin17]

Here is the deal. OS X can read NTFS but not write it. If you want to set it up for full access on your Mac, the best bet is to back the drive up, reformat the drive in FAT32 then put the data back on. Or I suppose you could also back it up, then format it with the Mac. But no, unless you want to reformate it you won't be able to write from OS X.

[Etoh*the*Greato]

A'ight. Thanks guys.

[Mithrandir]

The advice you are getting here is pretty much correct. The chances are very good your drive is NTFS (just control-click on it and select "get info" to see how it's formated). The fourth option under "general" will tell you the format of the drive.

Copy the data to your mac, then reformat the drive as either Win32 or Extended/Journaled Finally, copy the data back to your drive.