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From: Molly O Chamberlain on 4 May 2008 21:40
I've got a newish (still Tiger) MacBook Pro and an antiquated old
Frankenstein of a PC that I put together in high school with spare
parts. I have gigs upon gigs of data (music, mostly) on my PC that I'd
like to keep, but I want to get rid of the damn thing. I don't
suddenly hate PCs now that I have a Mac; the thing's just *ancient*.

The hard drive on the Mac isn't nearly large enough to hold all of the
data I have, so I'd like to buy an external hard drive to keep
archives and all my music on. I would *love* if it could work like a
flash drive, but I know that's a different kind of memory, and Macs
and PCs have different file formatting.

How can I put all my PC data onto an external hard drive that would
from then on be exclusively used with a Mac? (Also, any suggestions on
external hard drives? Never had one.)

Thanks!

(xposted)
From: Tim Murray on 4 May 2008 23:48
On Sun, 4 May 2008 21:40:35 -0400, Molly O Chamberlain wrote:
>
> How can I put all my PC data onto an external hard drive that would
> from then on be exclusively used with a Mac? (Also, any suggestions on
> external hard drives? Never had one.)

You can buy a stand-alone enclosure for your existing hard drive -- I have
one that is both USB and FireWire and it cost me $40. It's inside mounts
hold 2.5 and 3.5-inch drives.

One key to if it's usable is if the PC drive is in FAT32 or NTFS format. Do
you know how to determine this? If it's FAT32 you can, if you want, leave it
as is. If it's NTFS it's a bit more of a hassle.

From: Heath Raftery on 5 May 2008 00:03
Molly O Chamberlain <mollyochamberlain(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> I've got a newish (still Tiger) MacBook Pro and an antiquated old
> Frankenstein of a PC that I put together in high school with spare
> parts. I have gigs upon gigs of data (music, mostly) on my PC that I'd
> like to keep, but I want to get rid of the damn thing. I don't
> suddenly hate PCs now that I have a Mac; the thing's just *ancient*.
>
> The hard drive on the Mac isn't nearly large enough to hold all of the
> data I have, so I'd like to buy an external hard drive to keep
> archives and all my music on. I would *love* if it could work like a
> flash drive, but I know that's a different kind of memory, and Macs
> and PCs have different file formatting.

Common misconception in fact. File formats do not have anything to do
with "Mac" or "PC". A mp3 format file is a mp3 format file on any OS.

The file *systems* are usually different though (Windows = NTFS, Mac
= HFS+). But again, this is very unlikely to be a cause for concern,
since the Mac can read any of the common formats anyway.

> How can I put all my PC data onto an external hard drive that would
> from then on be exclusively used with a Mac? (Also, any suggestions on
> external hard drives? Never had one.)

Just do it! Flash drives are often formatted in the FAT file system,
since that's readable by just about anything. You could do the same
with your hard drive if you wished. That'd probably be the best way
to get started, since you could plug the drive into your PC and copy
away, then plug it straight into your Mac and be good to go.

Alternatively though, you could format the hard drive using the Mac
with HFS+ (native format = likely to get most benefit out of the
Mac) and connect the PC to the Mac via a network. File sharing over
the network will take care of the file system differences for you.

> (xposted)

What? There's no crossposts. Did you multipost instead? That's bad.

--
*--------------------------------------------------------*
| ^Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool^ |
| Heath Raftery, HRSoftWorks _\|/_ |
*______________________________________m_('.')_m_________*
From: Molly O Chamberlain on 5 May 2008 00:52

> One key to if it's usable is if the PC drive is in FAT32 or NTFS format. Do
> you know how to determine this? If it's FAT32 you can, if you want, leave it
> as is. If it's NTFS it's a bit more of a hassle.

The hard drive on the PC is partitioned, and both partitions are
NTFS.

But if I got an external hard drive, formatted it FAT32, both PCs and
Macs could read *and* write?
From: Molly O Chamberlain on 5 May 2008 00:56

> Just do it! Flash drives are often formatted in the FAT file system,
> since that's readable by just about anything. You could do the same
> with your hard drive if you wished. That'd probably be the best way
> to get started, since you could plug the drive into your PC and copy
> away, then plug it straight into your Mac and be good to go.

Okay, rad. Totally rad. Thanks.
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