PC to Mac

godtabh

I am thinking of upgrading to I Book. Currently have a windows based laptop.

Only in early stages of thinking about it but here is my question.

I have an external hard drive with all my music photos etc on it.

Its a western digital hd. Says it can be used with Mac. Is it possible to plug from pc into mac with out reformatting?

Or will i have to burn everything to dvd and put it all back on my iBook?

Any one have any ideas?

aidan_walsh

It appears that OS X will read and write FAT32, and read only NTFS. Since NTFS is a proprietary system that no official details have been released about, bear in mind that all third party implementations (non Windows ones) are essentially hacks, and may not work properly. You could lose your data.

Personally, I'd advise backing up and formatting.

art

Would have thought an external drive will be okay, an OS isn't going to format an external device, it will just return "unreadable" device etc and "offer" to format if it can't see the data.

But if it's a FAT32 device you should certainly be able to read the data no problem then to be sure you could copy everything onto the iBook and get OSX to format the drive to ensure its compatibility?

Girlfriend has an iBook by the way and its feckin great, really started me thinking of ditching WIndows altogether and getting a Mac too. The OS is great, miles ahead of Windows but the build quality on the iBook itself is wonderful, full of clever little touches - I keep opening and closing it and feeling it!!

aidan_walsh

Ah, sorry, I missed the word "external" when I was reading, thought you wanted to fit a disk inside. In that case, keep it FAT32 and you're flying.

Laguna

art wrote:

The OS is great, miles ahead of Windows but the build quality on the iBook itself is wonderful, full of clever little touches - I keep opening and closing it and feeling it!!

LOL, you're right there, I'm delighted with my iBook too!, the damn thing looks/sounds/feels so nice. Apple seem to have it spot on in comparison to Microsoft, they design functional and attractive software & hardware and seem to genuinely understand the needs of the customer.

godtabh

art wrote:

Would have thought an external drive will be okay, an OS isn't going to format an external device, it will just return "unreadable" device etc and "offer" to format if it can't see the data.

But if it's a FAT32 device you should certainly be able to read the data no problem then to be sure you could copy everything onto the iBook and get OSX to format the drive to ensure its compatibility?

The laptop is running XP home and as far as I know that automaticlly uses FAT32 doesnt it? Or am I wrong?

Should if it is FAT32 it should be just a mtter of plug and play then?

art

kearnsr wrote:

The laptop is running XP home and as far as I know that automaticlly uses FAT32 doesnt it? Or am I wrong?

Should if it is FAT32 it should be just a mtter of plug and play then?

Well you said its an external hard disk, so the flavour of OS is not necessarily relevant. XP can run using FAT32 but if the internal Hard Drive is very large its more likely to be NTFS. When the External Hard Drive was being set up there would have been a choice of format or it may have arrived pre-formatted for windows - in which case it probably was set to FAT32 as that is more plug n play, but can't say for sure. However, to use sucessfully with a Mac I'd imagine it still needs reformatting for mac (ie to read and write there and to take advantage of the disk's full size) but I'd expect you can read from it fine whilst it is plugged into the mac (assuming its FAT32)

formatman

if you do have any problems , just network the 2 computers and the External drive can be shared through the windows laptop


if you plug in the external drive to the mac don't be put off by the initial slow speed as spotlight ( indexing and searching system ) will catalog any new drives

440Hz

I can plug my external HD into either my mac or my PC at work with no worries. I have never had any problem swapping external devices between the two platforms, except for ipods of course!
You should be safe enough to fire ahead. As for being in the early stages of deciding whether to come to the bright side... I cannot encourage you enough to make the move. I use PCs at work and hate them, I am so happy to return to my mac in the evenings. I have been using macs forever, have never/will never buy a PC if I can help it!

godtabh

Just checked. HD is FAT32.

Might go up to pc world and see if they'll let my plug it in to one of the their apples and see what happens!