Making the switch from PC to Mac w/ External Hard Drive

[jessedylan]

I have a PC and will soon be purchasing a Mac. I recently bought a Lacie External Hard Drive so that I could backup my PC in preparation for the switch. I haven't connected the external hard drive yet, and from what I've read, it's a good thing that I haven't. It sounds like I need to buy my Mac first, allow the Mac to format the external hard drive, then connect the newly formatted hard drive to my old PC, where I can begin backing up files. I'm running XP Pro on my PC, and will be using XP Pro on my Mac through Parallels as well (I think).

According to Lacie's FAQs (scroll down 25%, begins "The Lacie PDF manual..."), they recommend purchasing a third-party software called MacDrive. I'm wondering if anyone has used the software, or if someone might have been in a similar situation and how they addressed it. Even if I manage to backup all of my old PC files I'm worried about accessing those files from the Mac OS and from XP (using Parallels) if I don't choose to format the external hard drive correctly.

Any thoughts?

 

[longmover]

If I were you I'd setup the drive with your PC, formatting it as FAT32. Then back up all your stuff onto it and transfer it to your mac (macs can read and write to FAT32).

Once you're happy you have all your stuff over you can either stick with FAT32 or reformat the drive as HFS+ (from your mac). If you plan on using the haddisk with both PCs and macs then leave it as FAT32.

 

[ChrisA]

PCs and Macs can both read and write to FAT formatted drives. That's one way to go.

The quicker way to go is to use a network connection. Plug both computers into the same switch and "share" a PC folder. It should appear in the Mac desktop then just drage over what you want.

But yes you do need to backup your stuff and as long as you have the bacups, just put that media into the Mac.

 

[jessedylan]

Fat32

If I were you I'd setup the drive with your PC, formatting it as FAT32. Then back up all your stuff onto it and transfer it to your mac (macs can read and write to FAT32).

Once you're happy you have all your stuff over you can either stick with FAT32 or reformat the drive as HFS+ (from your mac). If you plan on using the haddisk with both PCs and macs then leave it as FAT32.

My concern with using FAT32 is that I know it bundles the data in groups of 32 GBs, which (from some of the other threads that I've read) I would like to avoid. Any mac purists that agree with this?

 

[soLoredd]

What I did with my 100GB USB external was format it to FAT32 using XP. When I got my MacBook, I used that to move what I needed over to the MacBook and then formatted it for HFS+, since I am not using my XP anymore.

I've heard and read MacDrive is good and am curious to try it out myself, although I don't really have a use for it. It would be nice to have something for when I go to friends' houses or something where only a PC is available. But then...I do have a MacBook!

MacDrive has a demo version available, it won't hurt to try it.