The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    External USB HDD for Win and Mac

    Discussion in 'Accessories' started by alect, Nov 16, 2007.

  1. alect

    alect Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    3
    Messages:
    167
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    I am going to buy the WD Mybook external HDD 500gb. Have smaller versions of these and have been very happy.

    One question. One of its main uses will be for pro digital photography - during the shoot and after. Is it compatible with both Win (Vista) machines as well as Mac? Does it need to be reformatted or anything to switch between the two or is it simply Plug'n'Play? For some reason I have a fear that the file system will be different between Win and Mac and once we format it for Mac for file storage during the shoot, a Win machine won't be able to get those files off the HDD afterwards.

    reassure me!
     
    alect, Nov 16, 2007
    #1
  2. Sam

    Sam Notebook Virtuoso

    Reputations:
    3,661
    Messages:
    9,249
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    205
    Windows cannot read or write to Mac formatted hard drives (HFS+), and Mac OS X cannot write to Windows (NTFS) formatted drives (OS X can read NTFS though), so yeah.

    What you can do is buy MacDrive for Windows so Windows can read and write to HFS+ drives (and that's the best option, if you are willing to pay $50 for MacDrive). If not, what you can do is leave the hard drive as FAT32, and both OS X and Windows can read and write to it.

    You can also use MacFUSE for OS X so you can write to NTFS, but it slows down transfer speed quite a lot, so not the best idea.

    So yeah, I'd say the best idea is to buy MacDrive for Windows, and format the drive for Mac (HFS+), but if you can't justify spending money on it, then format the hard drive as FAT32 :).
     
    Sam, Nov 16, 2007
    #2
  3. count_schemula

    count_schemula Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    331
    Messages:
    1,445
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    FAT32 FTW in this case... :shifty
     
    count_schemula, Nov 16, 2007
    #3
  4. alect

    alect Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    3
    Messages:
    167
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    Would this hard drive come formatted FAT32 out of the box? Once I am done with it for the shoot, can I reformat the HDD NTFS if I no longer need to share it with a Mac (assuming I have moved the data)?
     
    alect, Nov 16, 2007
    #4
  5. Razor2

    Razor2 Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    107
    Messages:
    914
    Likes Received:
    8
    Trophy Points:
    31
    Yes, most External HDDs are FAT32 preformated. You can later format them to whatever you like.
     
    Razor2, Nov 16, 2007
    #5