Do I need to reformat External HD?

Lewwy · Nov 28, 2007

I got an External HD, and immediatley backed up all my files on my Mac, but I want to be able to transfere the files over to a Windows PC.. Should I have hooked it up to the PC first?

Thanks!

cwa107 · Nov 28, 2007

Lewwy said:
I got an External HD, and immediatley backed up all my files on my Mac, but I want to be able to transfere the files over to a Windows PC.. Should I have hooked it up to the PC first?

Thanks!

If you formatted the HD on the Mac, it's likely using the HFS filesystem, which is Mac only (although you can purchase a program called MacDrive that allows a Windows machine to read and write to it). If you were to format it on your Windows machine, it would likely be formatted NTFS, which the Mac can only read (although you can purchase a program called Paragon NTFS for Mac which will allow you to write to it as well).

The simplest (and cheapest solution) would be to hook the drive up to your Mac and format it in FAT32, which both OSes will be able to read and write to. When you go to format the drive, make sure you choose "MS-DOS" under volume format. That will format the drive in FAT32. You don't want to do this from a Windows machine, because Windows imposes an artificial limit of 32GB for FAT32 partitions.

Lewwy · Nov 28, 2007

Wow.. That was all I wanted and more !

So I assume my 4gig Flash Drive is FAT32, because it works with both machines?

Appreciate the help, but is it possible to hook up the drive to a Windows PC, and a Mac?

Or even just 2 Macs?

Cheers !

D3v1L80Y · Nov 28, 2007

Most external drives that I have seen come preformatted as FAT32. You probably won't need to reformat anything, but be sure to check it first. You could proably save yourself some trouble that way.

cwa107 · Nov 28, 2007

Lewwy said:
Wow.. That was all I wanted and more !

So I assume my 4gig Flash Drive is FAT32, because it works with both machines?

Yes.

Appreciate the help, but is it possible to hook up the drive to a Windows PC, and a Mac?

Or even just 2 Macs?

Cheers !

Yes, as long as you're using a filesystem that is compatible with both Operating Systems. As I mentioned previously, format it with the Mac and choose "MS-DOS" as the format type and it should work between both machines.

Lewwy · Nov 29, 2007

cwa107 said:
Yes.

Yes, as long as you're using a filesystem that is compatible with both Operating Systems. As I mentioned previously, format it with the Mac and choose "MS-DOS" as the format type and it should work between both machines.

Thats great, thanks for the info..

Will it hinder the performance in any way, formatted at Fat32?

cwa107 · Nov 29, 2007

Lewwy said:
Thats great, thanks for the info..

Will it hinder the performance in any way, formatted at Fat32?

To some extent, yes. In particular, you can't write files larger than 4GB (as I recall). Additionally, unlike HFS which pretty much maintains itself, the drive will be susceptible to fragmentation, much like any Windows filesystem. The same would be true if the drive was formatted NTFS.

If you feel really strongly about not wanting to format the drive and/or performance is very important, you might want to check out MacDrive for Windows, which allows Windows to read/write HFS.