Allbot Posted May 22, 2010 Share Posted May 22, 2010 so i need a external hard drive and i have a mac and a pc. could u use the hard drive for both mac and pc? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouchy Posted May 22, 2010 Share Posted May 22, 2010 On the box, check out OS requirements and there's your answer. My 1TB Seagate only works on Windows. My relaxation method involves a bottle of lotion, beautiful women, and partial nudity. Yes I get massages. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tripsis Posted May 22, 2010 Share Posted May 22, 2010 I have a G-Drive 2TB external hard drive that I originally bought for my Mac so it was formatted for Mac computers. Later, when I got a Windows PC, I was able to also use it with my PC after installing MacDrive (cost something like $40 though). - 99 fletching | 99 thieving | 99 construction | 99 herblore | 99 smithing | 99 woodcutting - - 99 runecrafting - 99 prayer - 125 combat - 95 farming - - Blog - DeviantART - Book Reviews & Blog Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crimsonsmash Posted May 22, 2010 Share Posted May 22, 2010 The short answer is yes. When you first get the hard drive it will be formatted as either NTFS (Windows compatible only) or FAT32 (Windows and Mac compatible). Windows XP and above read and write both natively so no problems there. Macs, on the other hand, only natively read and write FAT32; if the Mac is running the latest version of OS X (version 10.6, Snow Leopard) it will also natively read but not write NTFS. If your not going to be using the drive for "large" files (4GBs or more), and the drive isn't already, just format the drive as FAT32 using a Windows PC. If you want to use it for "large" files, you'll have to format it as NTFS (using Windows) and install MacFuse and NTFS-3G (both are free) on your Mac in order to be able to read and write the NTFS partition. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
indy500fan Posted May 22, 2010 Share Posted May 22, 2010 And while it may seem that you never really need to worry about a 4gig+ file, just think most DVD ISOs are bigger and won't work on it, as well as most good quality HD movie rips. So I would suggest just going with NTFS and getting the programs on the Mac to make it compatible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laura Posted May 22, 2010 Share Posted May 22, 2010 On the box, check out OS requirements and there's your answer. My 1TB Seagate only works on Windows.You really shouldn't get caught up in that. You can format the drive to work on OS X. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Allbot Posted May 22, 2010 Author Share Posted May 22, 2010 one of the main reasons im getting a external hard drive is to backup my mac with time machine, would that still work with NTFS if i use something like MacFuse? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laura Posted May 22, 2010 Share Posted May 22, 2010 one of the main reasons im getting a external hard drive is to backup my mac with time machine, would that still work with NTFS if i use something like MacFuse?No, Time Machine requires HFS+ formatting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sbrideau Posted May 23, 2010 Share Posted May 23, 2010 Why not just make partitions? A partition for the Mac backups and another partition for the rest. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laura Posted May 23, 2010 Share Posted May 23, 2010 Why not just make partitions? A partition for the Mac backups and another partition for the rest.That would be the only way because Time Machine will not allow you to write to the backup drive without corrupting the data. It takes a bit more work because OS X will not format the drive into NTFS and Windows will not format the drive into HFS+ (OS Extended Journal). Use both of these articles for assistance. http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030613121738812http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080411155517808&query=NTFS+and+FAT32 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Allbot Posted May 24, 2010 Author Share Posted May 24, 2010 so i was looking into partitioning hard drives on youtube, i saw that you can use disk utilities on the mac to partition and format the hard drive with both HFS and NTFS. would this work with time machine? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crimsonsmash Posted May 24, 2010 Share Posted May 24, 2010 In my experience Mac OS X does a very poor job of creating NTFS partitions. You'd be better off making an HFS+partition for Time Machine and leaving the rest as free space and then using windows to format the free space as NTFS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laura Posted May 24, 2010 Share Posted May 24, 2010 so i was looking into partitioning hard drives on youtube, i saw that you can use disk utilities on the mac to partition and format the hard drive with both HFS and NTFS. would this work with time machine?Can you link the video? In Disk Utility I am not getting the option to partition as NTFS.In my experience Mac OS X does a very poor job of creating NTFS partitions. You'd be better off making an HFS+partition for Time Machine and leaving the rest as free space and then using windows to format the free space as NTFS.Yes, that is how I would go about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Allbot Posted May 25, 2010 Author Share Posted May 25, 2010 here is the link to the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onumOP3Pq4M Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laura Posted May 25, 2010 Share Posted May 25, 2010 here is the link to the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onumOP3Pq4MHe is formatting the disk into two partitions, one that is HFS+ and one that is FAT, not NTFS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Allbot Posted May 25, 2010 Author Share Posted May 25, 2010 here is the link to the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onumOP3Pq4MHe is formatting the disk into two partitions, one that is HFS+ and one that is FAT, not NTFS. would i still be able to use time machine with the HFS+ partition and FAT with windows and mac? and another question which does the ps3 use? btw thx for all the help! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laura Posted May 25, 2010 Share Posted May 25, 2010 here is the link to the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onumOP3Pq4MHe is formatting the disk into two partitions, one that is HFS+ and one that is FAT, not NTFS. would i still be able to use time machine with the HFS+ partition and FAT with windows and mac? and another question which does the ps3 use? btw thx for all the help!Perhaps someone else could explain it better than me, but I'll give it a shot. The FAT32 (MS-DOS, in this case) format limits any specific file size to about 4GB which is why you want NTFS. FAT32 is compatible with Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and various other operating systems. So yes, you would be able to use the HFS+ partition for Time Machine and then the FAT format for both Mac and Windows. However, remember that the FAT32 format will not allow any file sizes larger than 4GB, so don't bother putting video/larger media on it. I don't know anything about the PS3 other than it can play Blu-Ray discs, so I'm not much help on that one. :P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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