Can I use my old pc hard drive with MB Pro..? And read the contents?

I am still really happy with my MBP but it doesn't take too long to fill up the hard drive does it? lol

I kept my old PC hard drive and wondered how to go about using it. I mean...

Can I use it with as an external hd without any problems?
What do I need? (What lead/software)
Can I read all the files I had?

And how does it work? I mean can I do anything, like putting files from my Mac to PC? Should/can I erase windows from the hd, put OSX on it and keep the files I want that are already on the hd.

Sorry for being new to all this and asking so many questions!

Thank you for your help,

Two things to do in order to use your old PC hard drive:

1. Buy one of these.

2. Re-format the drive to either Mac HFS Extended Journaled or FAT-32.

Sure you can. Either get an adapter like Chscag said, or get an external USB case and put the drive in there.

From OS X, you'll be able to read and write to the drive (if it's FAT32) or just read from it (if it's NTFS formatted). My advice? Get all the files you need from the drive and copy them over to your Mac. Once you're done, re format the external HDD with HFS+.

If you want to share the drive with Windows PCs you have two options:
1. Format it in FAT32, which will give you a file limit of 4GB. i.e., you won't be able to save a file bigger than 4GB.
2. Format it in ExFAT. This way you'll have full access with both OS X and Windows 7.

Thanks for your replies. That's great news!


I'm looking forward to seeing all the cool things I forgot I had on there...I just need an adapter...