External Harddrive from Windows to Mac...

[samrulestothema]

Woohoo, today i bought my first (and hopefully not the last) iMac. I have a 500GB external harddrive in windows format, so it obviously needs to be reformatted into Mac formant. Once i have i copied all the data from my external to my windows internal, i can then format it into a mac format, i was just wondering how i then get all the data back onto the newly formatted external from my windows internal? will windows recognise its a mac format harddrive?and will it still allow to put all of the data back onto it.

Thanks, and sorry to be so long.

Sam

 

[tersono]

Windows cannot natively read or write Mac-formatted hard drives. Macs can read Windows disks, however (NTFS read only, FAT32 read/write). So transfer the data to your mac and/or windows box before reformatting your external drive.

 

[takeabyteoutta]

parition the drive

i assume you want to use it with time capsule. back everything up by moving the stuff onto the mac, then partition part of it (25-50%) to put into the mac format.

 

[TheSpecialist]

What I would do is this:

Put everything on Windows box, format external in FAT32 (Windows & Mac Read/Write), copy everything back to external, copy from external to Mac, reformat external in Mac partition, transfer back from internal to external

 

[Consultant]

Windows:
- can install MacDrive to read Mac formatted drives.

Mac:
- Can read write to windows FAT volumes (fat has a limit of max 4gb size per file though)

- Can read windows NTFS volumes (you can install an app to write to NTFS, but it's slow)

- Can read / write any windows drives if connected via your network (ethernet is recommended)

 

[samrulestothema]

Sweet as guys. after about 4 hours of copying al of my data from my external tp verious other windows drives, and finding i had not enough space, then deleting about 50 GB of stuff (stuff i need and am regretting) i found out that my hardrive was already in fat32 format and can be read and as you allsay written onto as well. So thanks for all of your helpful advice

 

[bluedoggiant]

i assume you want to use it with time capsule. back everything up by moving the stuff onto the mac, then partition part of it (25-50%) to put into the mac format.

Thats not how it works.

Time Capsule is an Airport Extreme base station with a hard drive in it for backup.

 

[srt42b]

I formatted it as a HFS+ and got a third party app. for Windows to read/write to it. No problems either.