First off, I'm an amateur when it comes to tech jargon, so bear with me. I just got my first mac (running Mountain Lion) and I have a bunch of files saved to an external hard drive from my old pc. A lot of it is music and I was able to import it to the mac easily. But I also have a ton of pictures, videos etc. that I don't want to lose and I want to keep on that hard drive.
I want to be able to use the external hard drive to save files from my mac on as well. I read something about going to disc utility to reformat to FAT32 (to me, that's just a bunch of letters and numbers). I'm not experienced doing such things and when I went to disc utility to see about doing this, it appeared as if I would have to delete all the files currently on the harddrive before it could be reformatted to use for both mac and windows.
Is this the case? Can I reformat it to save mac files without having to erase what's already on there?
If someone could provide a step by step instruction on how to do this, I would much appreciate it. (it mentioned something about partitions too and I have no idea what that all means...not like I NEED to know what it means, but I am just telling you) Unfortunately a lot of the knowledge that you guys have as far as where to go and what to do (more tech jargon) is something I don't yet have, so the instructions would need to be clear on how to go about doing this. Thanks a lot, in advance.
I want to be able to use the external hard drive to save files from my mac on as well. I read something about going to disc utility to reformat to FAT32 (to me, that's just a bunch of letters and numbers). I'm not experienced doing such things and when I went to disc utility to see about doing this, it appeared as if I would have to delete all the files currently on the harddrive before it could be reformatted to use for both mac and windows.
Is this the case? Can I reformat it to save mac files without having to erase what's already on there?
If someone could provide a step by step instruction on how to do this, I would much appreciate it. (it mentioned something about partitions too and I have no idea what that all means...not like I NEED to know what it means, but I am just telling you) Unfortunately a lot of the knowledge that you guys have as far as where to go and what to do (more tech jargon) is something I don't yet have, so the instructions would need to be clear on how to go about doing this. Thanks a lot, in advance.