Using external hard drive from PC

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I am switching to a Macbook Pro, but wanted to know what I should do with my external drive that I've used as a backup for my PC. Can I just plug it into the Mac (it's USB)? Or do I need to reformat it first? Obviously, I don't want to lose any data. I have a Western Digital My Passport external hard drive.
 
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If the drive was formatted FAT, then you can just plug it into your Mac and start working. If it was formatted NTFS, you'll need the help of a third-party app (like this) to read and write to it.
 
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Thanks

Hey thanks for the info. If I use the 3rd party app you mentioned to read & write to the drive, will it erase the data that's already there?
 

Slydude

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Not unless something truly bizarre happens or you want it to erase the data.
 
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OS X can read NTFS filesystems, it just can't write to them. If you don't want to get a 3rd party app involved (which I don't like to do if I can help it) you can copy the data on the external drive to your Mac, then reformat the drive as FAT (MS-DOS on the Mac) or HFS+ (the filesystem of choice on the Mac). Then just copy all your data back to the drive.

The filesystem you use will depend on whether you plan on ever using the drive with a Windows PC again. If so, use FAT (MS-DOS) just understand that it won't support files over 4 Gigabytes in size. If you only plan on using the drive with your Mac, go with HFS+.
 

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