04-12-2006, 05:22 PM

Hello everyone,

I'm switching over to macs finally. I've been waiting for the Intels to come out and get some good running under their belts before I made the switch.

What I'm ordering is a top of the line decked out Macbook Pro and a decked out dual core mini.

My biggest problem as of now is on the mini. The reason I'm getting the mini is to hook it up to my 50" Samsung HDTV and use it as both a computer and a home entertainment system using the freeware CenterStage. The reason I'll be using CenterStage instead of Front Row is because it allows use of Video_TS files on it. This is where everything comes into play, because I have a 400 GB external hard drive hooked up to my windows pc that has my movies backed up into it. Now, if I am switching to mac, how can I get this external hard drive to work on my mini for both reading and writing purposes?

Much help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Josh

04-12-2006, 05:32 PM

congrats on the switch, and its a big one!

something to check ot is to make sure that the video card in the mini can do what you need for that monster tv.

the hard drive...i cant remember what needs to be done for it

04-12-2006, 05:37 PM

I'm getting the mini for free, so it's a start until Apple comes out with an entertainment pc. The pc I'm using now for that works great and it doesn't have any better picture quality than the mini does.

The main thing I'm worried about is moving the hard drive...and from your post....it's possible?

04-12-2006, 08:01 PM

Not sure if this helps, but the Macs I have (intel imac and ibook g4) recognize my USB external hard drive as soon as I connect it (it was used with my WinXP machines previously has the external backup device).

04-12-2006, 08:23 PM

It should work with your external hard drive, well taking out files from the hard drive to the Mac Mini. Except for some reason I can't put files from my iMac to the Hard Drive with mine. I am just about to put up a post about this problem, as well as doing some research over at Google.

I will get back to this post as soon as I am done.

04-12-2006, 08:35 PM

I am assuming that your 400GB drive is setup as 1 large partition and formated as NTFS. If that is the case then OSX will support it in read only mode. If you need to write to it with from windows and mac you need to convert it to Fat32. Only drawback is that XP/2000 only support up to 32GB in fat32. Win9X supports 80GB or 120GB I dont recall which it is. Hope it helps.

edit: I forgot, fat32 only supports files up to 4GB.

04-12-2006, 09:10 PM

Do you need to use the external on the PC anymore, or just the Macs?

Mac's, as said above, can only read NTFS (NT File System, used by XP, 2000) but can read and write FAT32.

If you only need to use the drive on the Macs, couldn't he convert the external the HFS?

04-12-2006, 11:00 PM

I was just thinking...since I'm getting Intel dual cores...couldn't i run boot camp when it launches and rip all of my dvds in windows, store them on the hard drive, and than read them in OSX? Would this work?

04-13-2006, 02:10 AM

Originally Posted by jarth3000

I was just thinking...since I'm getting Intel dual cores...couldn't i run boot camp when it launches and rip all of my dvds in windows, store them on the hard drive, and than read them in OSX? Would this work?

Sounds like a plan to me.