maxtor hard drive question

[gean]

I have read the question in previous post about hard drive. I still not sure. I have a maxtor one touch 200 gig (model A01A200) that i only use for backing up data. I don't let it run unless it being use. Since i just got a imac (about 1 month) i need to back up file. (i have moved photo to imac, ect.) My question is should i reformat the drive for imac use only; for backup ect. Or should i get another hard drive for imac? is this is your suggestion please explain why? I would rather not buy another if i don't have to.

thanks,

gean
____________________
imac
24inch screen

 

[eMace]

If your Maxtor's in NTFS (Windows) format, you can use MacFuse to read/write the drive on a Mac. That way you can use the Maxtor on your Mac and Windows machines (and you won't have to erase everything that's on the drive already by reformatting). Otherwise, if you're just gonna use the drive on the Mac, I don't see any problem with reformatting it for Mac use only.

 

[yellow]

It depends on how/what you want to back up.

• If you want to make a direct, bootable clone of your current installation, you MUST format it as HFS+. For the sake of completeness, you can buy MacDrive to install on your Windows PCs to read/write to HFS+ drives.
• If you're just looking to drag and drop files, as long as the files aren't 4GB and larger, then you can use FAT32, which will be usable on both Mac and Windows.
• Personally, I'd avoid using anything that purports to fully support NTFS. I see problems here and there about reading/writing to/from the NTFS volume, and that's not a problem you want to have when you're trying to use the volume as a backup.

 

[eMace]

Personally, I'd avoid using anything that purports to fully support NTFS. I see problems here and there about reading/writing to/from the NTFS volume, and that's not a problem you want to have when you're trying to use the volume as a backup.

That's true. When I first loaded Macfuse and NTFS drivers on my iMac, I had problems getting my Maxtor NTFS drive to mount (I also have a Western Digital NTFS drive that auto-mounted with no problem). I had to enable root user, force a mount, etc. But now it seems to be working ok. So far so good.

Oh, one more thing. When I shutdown my computer, I have to disconnect my external hard drives or else my Mac will hangup on the shutdown screen. Just a warning in case you decide to go the Macfuse route.

 

[Drag'nGT]

I wanna bump this for a similar question but still different.

The Maxtor says I need to load their software for it to work. It works anyway but I want it to be used as my Time Machine back up. I don't need to load that mac installer from Maxtor for that right? I can just tell Time Machine that's the disc I want to use and it'll take care of the rest.

My old Time Machine is full so I'm just changing out. My last external had a dual partition... anything special I need to do to reformat it since it shows up as two different volumes?

Thanks