FreeAgent Go question

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I'm going to be buying a MBP soon and it will be my first. I want to put my iTunes, pictures, etc. on a HD from my PC and then put them on the Macbook... If I buy the Mac formatted FreeAgent Go, will it still work with my PC just to transfer stuff on?
 

vansmith

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Mini (2014, 2018, 2020), MBA (2020), iPad Pro (2018), iPhone 13 Pro Max, Watch (S6)
You don't need to buy a specially formatted drive - OS X can format the drive for you. If I were to guess, that "Mac Ready" drive is more expensive when it doesn't need to be.

If you format the drive with a Mac filesystem, Windows will not be able to read from it. On the other hand, if you format it with FAT, both OSes will be able to read and write to it. The big downside of this is that FAT has a fie size limit of 4GB. So, you won't be able to store a file that is larger than 4GB on it.
 
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So am I screwed with getting my PC files to my Mac? Or is there another way.

I know that the Mac store people will do it for you but my stuff is scattered around and I DON'T want them to transfer all of it.
 
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2.8GHz, 4GB RAM 15" MBP (Late 2008)
I've never had experience with these drives, but I would suggest to buy the PC-compatible drive and format it on Windows (I guess there's some seagate software preinstalled on it). Then drop your files onto the FreeAgent Go, and connect to your Mac. It should without a doubt be able to take and use those files as long as you have the right applications (ex. Photoshop for .psd files, etc.)

Then, if you never plan on using the drive with a PC ever again, you can use the disk utility on the Mac to format it specifically for Macs. That way, you can put larger files on it.
 

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