Copying files from external drive to MacBook

I have a new external 250G hard drive The external drive is formatted in FAT32, so it is should be PC and MAC compatible. I realize that FAT32 doesn't support files larger than 4G, but that's ok at the moment. The external drive has tons of MP3 files on it.

Since I've only had my first Mac for a couple of weeks, I'm still learning the basics. I'm planning to simply attach the external drive to the MacBook and copy the MP3 files that I want. Is it going to be that simple?

Should be.

It will be.

I setup an external drive for copying/backing up image files. I shoot a lot of band photography and I'm now at the point where if the laptop dies all my pictures go with it. I attach the External drive through Firewire every weekend and transfer files over. It's just like moving any file to a new folder. Through firewire the transfer goes pretty quick as well. I move about 2 GB of data in a couple of minutes.

As easy as drag and drop.

im juss bout to get an external hdd

i have a pc and a mac

which laptop should i use to fomatt the hdd?
i heard someone say that if i use the pc to format the hdd the mac can only read it but not write
and if i use the mac to format, then i cant transfer files bigger than 1GB on the pc

is wat these ppl saying true?

Not entirely.

If you format the drive with windows XP it prefers to format things as NTFS which the mac can read but not write.
Also XP will limit you to 32GB if you try to format it as FAT32. OS X can format FAT32 to any size.

If you use FAT32, you are limited to files smaller than 4GB.

You can format a FAT32 drive with a different tool other than the Windows File Manager (or what's it called anyway---i can't remember! AHHH) and overcome the 32GB limit.

FAT32 drives have an official size limit of 2 Terabytes.

so i should use OSX to format the external hd?

Yep.

But they usually come pre-formatted to FAT 32 anyway.

But if it isn't, open disk utility and select 'erase' and as format choose 'MS-DOS' format.