PC files on Maxtor. Will new PB recognize them?

I'll be making the switch official when my PB 17-incher gets here next week, but I have a question about its compatibility with my Maxtor 5000 external drive. I saved a lot of files, photos, music, docs, etc., on the Maxtor when it was connected to my Windows PC. The drive is compatible with Mac, but what will happen when I connect it to my new PB? Will I be able to transfer these files to my PB, or will they be unreadable? I tried searching for the answer on the Maxtor site, but came up empty. My fear is that I'll have to format the drive so the PB can read it, thereby losing all my info. I still have my PC laptop (the desktop is gone), so I do something before trying to get my PB to connect with the drive? Any info and suggestions are appreciated. Thanks.

Whatever the case you'll be able to read from the drive just fine. However, if the drive is formatted in NTFS you may have to reformat the drive in order to be able to write to it.

The OS will promt you to initilize the drive if necessary. If it mounts without asking, then it will depending on the file types whether you will be able to read them.

The Mac OS has the ability to startup in "Target mode". This allows the OS to see (and access) the hard drive on another computer that is connected via firewire.

If the PC environment has something like this, maybe you can get to your data from another PC.