HD Backup help please..

Hello all,

I'm new here so I apologise if this has been covered before. I've just seen the light and bought an iBook G4, I'd like to back up the hard drive to an external drive that I'm also using with a PC.

The external drive is formatted with a FAT 32 flie system (apparently...and I have no idea what that means) and holds all my iTunes music. I'm told that this file system is not compatible with my Mac.


I'm wondering if I can format my external drive with a file structure that will be compatible with both the PC and the Mac so that once it's sorted I can re-copy my music on to it and also back up my Mac's HD to the same place.

If I can and someone can tell me if it's possible and how to do it I'll be most grateful.

Regards,

Phil

FAT32 is compatible with both Mac and Windows. Both OSs can read/write to FAT32, however, it's one downfall is that FAT32 cannot hold a file larger than 4Gb. That's about it.

Welcome to the Forums. :biohazard

This has been covered before, the search function shows a few threads similar to this one, but we can let it slide this time...

Search 1

Search 2

Thanks...

Thanks very much.

I guess if I want to back up my Mac HD I won't be able to use the Fat 32 structure if the max size is limited. I'll take a look at the links you've provided and work it out. Most kind.

Phil

Just to be clear on FAT32 -- the 4gig limitation is on an individual file, right? The size of the disk is not limited, right?

IIRC it is the files size, not the disc size, but I don't think Windows will format large HDDs in FAT 32 anymore but I could be wrong. The Mac WILL format any drive in FAT 32 though.

Baggss is recalling correctly.

The single file size limit is 4Gb. So if you have, say, a DVD image that's 4.7Gb...it will NOT write to a FAT32 drive.

Windows (XP at least) will format to FAT32. I did it just the other day for my Mom's new iMac [Intel].

But isn't a TS folder just that a folder with many smaller 'files' in it?