Hard Drive--is Mac & Pc The Same

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I wanna get a new HD for my g4, but I have a question, Are the hard drives the same for Mac & PC or do I have to find a hard drive that is only for mac if so where can i find a good deal on one that is at least 160gb - 250gb?
 
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they are pretty much the same, the only thing you will have to do is format the external so that its in the format that your mac HD is in so that you may backup your files to it etc.

If you aren't buying this HD for backup purposes then you don't even need to format it. I use mine to transfer stuff from my PC to my mac and have no problems with it at all.
 
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I wanna get a new HD for my g4, but I have a question, Are the hard drives the same for Mac & PC or do I have to find a hard drive that is only for mac if so where can i find a good deal on one that is at least 160gb - 250gb?

Just to expand a little on Drew's answer, the hard drive file format system is different. Mac uses HFS+, PC uses NTFS.

Mac will read, but cannot write to NTFS. That's why it's no good for backing up files from a Mac.
PC can neither read from nor write to a HFS+ disk. A NTFS disk is okay for transferring files to Mac, but not vice-versa.

If it's simple file swapping from PC to Mac you want to do, have you considered a flash drive? Up to 8 Gb now, and cheaper than a hard drive. It will transfer files from Mac to PC and vice-versa as long as it's formatted FAT32.

Update: There is a product called "MacDisk" for Windows that will permit HFS+ formatted drives to be read in Windows, by the way.
 
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murdocity
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Powermac G4 Dual 1GHZ 1 GB sdram 40 GB HD OS X LEOPARD
I actually wanna use it as my a 2nd drive. My g4 has a 40 gb but I'm a graphic designer so I need more space. I'm thinking about using to store pics, designs, downloads, music, document, etc. If I have to format the HD how would I go about doing that? thanks for all your help guys.
 
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I actually wanna use it as my a 2nd drive. My g4 has a 40 gb but I'm a graphic designer so I need more space. I'm thinking about using to store pics, designs, downloads, music, document, etc. If I have to format the HD how would I go about doing that? thanks for all your help guys.

Plug it in and use Disk Utility (Applications> Utilities) to format it to whatever you decide on.
 
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murdocity
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Cool thanks will do.
 
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I actually wanna use it as my a 2nd drive. My g4 has a 40 gb but I'm a graphic designer so I need more space. I'm thinking about using to store pics, designs, downloads, music, document, etc. If I have to format the HD how would I go about doing that?

Then go HFS+ using Disk Utility as SHP suggests. If you happen to be loading your work into a Windows environment, use MacDisk.
 

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