Format question

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Just bought a wd elements 1tb ext hhd.

i believe it is ms dos fat32 formatted do i need to change it to mac format.

I ask this question because looking i had previously purchased a la cie 320gb and i never formatted it. I just checked it and that is also fat32 but i have not had a problem on it. I have used it on mac and pc.

On this drive i want to move all my logic 8 files as well as other mac programs

Thanks in advance
 

chscag

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Recheck the format on that drive. Look in your user manual. One that large may be formatted to NTFS.

And if it is NTFS, you'll have to erase it and reformat it as HFS+ to use it with Time Machine.

Regards.
 

vansmith

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If you are looking to use it on a machine with Windows and with a Mac, you will need to use FAT32 (for read/write access). You can use other filesystems but this will require some software to be installed on one of the OSes.
 
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thanks guys
I checked the other drive and it said ms-dos fat32

a couple more questions

is there a down side to using fat32?

should i leave the 320gb drive at fat 32 and make the new one mac journal?

will this cause any issues?ie with the drives reading each other?

if i want to transfer my logic files and the whole logic program as well as other mac programs to the new hdd can i boot up from there or do i have to keep it on my computer ?
 

CrimsonRequiem


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thanks guys
I checked the other drive and it said ms-dos fat32

a couple more questions

is there a down side to using fat32?

should i leave the 320gb drive at fat 32 and make the new one mac journal?

will this cause any issues?ie with the drives reading each other?

if i want to transfer my logic files and the whole logic program as well as other mac programs to the new hdd can i boot up from there or do i have to keep it on my computer ?

The downside to FAT32 is that you can't transfer any file bigger than 4GB.
 

vansmith

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should i leave the 320gb drive at fat 32 and make the new one mac journal?
If you're only going to use this on a Mac, format the HD with a native OS X filesystem (HFS+). Like I mentioned earlier, if you are looking to use this with Windows and OS X, go with FAT32 unless you have >4GB files (as CrimsonRequiem alluded to).
 

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