Hello: I bought my iMac 1 week ago. At that time, it was my impression that I could directly connect my PC/Windows hard drives directly, via USB, and they should work fine. Indeed, for the first few days they did. Then, I noticed the first problem: On of the drive was locked as a "Read Only" drive and I could not change it. Then, my other drive crashed (coincidence?). Anyway, the guy at the Mac Store suggested I Partition the drives, which is basically reformatting them. (This already seems more work than what the 'dual compatibility' is sold as.) Anyway, tried multiple settings on partitioning with a JumpDrive and it seems that formatting as MS-DOS (FAT) is the only way the drive is compatible with bot Mac and PC. Am I doing this correctly?
Hard Drive compatibility Mac and PC
- Thread starter AmbassadorPointyEars
- Start date
NTFS = Windows Read/Write but Mac Read Only
Mac HFS+ = Mac OS Read/Write, (Windows Read/Write with software. See below.)
Fat 32 = Windows and Mac, both Read/Write, but 2 GB file-size limit. (Flash drives use this.)
My suggestion is to get everything onto your iMac, reformat the drive as HFS+ (Also known as Mac OS Extended) and then copy stuff back and you're good to go. If you need to read it on Windows, buy Mac Drive 7 for Windows ($50). It lets you read HFS+ drives on Windows.
That's your best bet, but if you don't want to pay for Mac Drive, or if you need it to work with MANY Windows machines, then go with FAT32. You'll have to find some way to work around 2 GB files, but if you don't do much video editing then that won't be a problem (even movies bought on iTunes tend to be closer to 1 GB).
EDIT: Explain the situation you need the drive for. I had 2 Macs and 1 PC in my house for a long time, but they were all on ethernet so this was never a problem. I left my firewire drives as HFS+, and if the PC needed them I just accessed them over the network without any problems.)
Mac HFS+ = Mac OS Read/Write, (Windows Read/Write with software. See below.)
Fat 32 = Windows and Mac, both Read/Write, but 2 GB file-size limit. (Flash drives use this.)
My suggestion is to get everything onto your iMac, reformat the drive as HFS+ (Also known as Mac OS Extended) and then copy stuff back and you're good to go. If you need to read it on Windows, buy Mac Drive 7 for Windows ($50). It lets you read HFS+ drives on Windows.
That's your best bet, but if you don't want to pay for Mac Drive, or if you need it to work with MANY Windows machines, then go with FAT32. You'll have to find some way to work around 2 GB files, but if you don't do much video editing then that won't be a problem (even movies bought on iTunes tend to be closer to 1 GB).
EDIT: Explain the situation you need the drive for. I had 2 Macs and 1 PC in my house for a long time, but they were all on ethernet so this was never a problem. I left my firewire drives as HFS+, and if the PC needed them I just accessed them over the network without any problems.)
Ya, keep them formatted as FAT and you'll be ok to jump them between multiple OSes, including Linux.
Thanks!!!
(So, was the HD crash a coincidence or due to some incompatibility with the iMac?)
(So, was the HD crash a coincidence or due to some incompatibility with the iMac?)
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