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    external drives?

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by stealthsniper96, Jun 25, 2007.

  1. stealthsniper96

    stealthsniper96 What Was I Thinkin'?

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    are all external drives mac compatable or are there only certain ones recognized by OSX?
     
    stealthsniper96, Jun 25, 2007
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  2. wave

    wave Notebook Virtuoso

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    All external firewire and USB harddisks and sticks should work with OSX. NAS is a bit more complicated. A true NAS should work since it is IP based but some companies use special protocols and might only have drivers for Windows.

    You might have to format it in some Mac friendly format since some come preformated in NTFS.
     
    wave, Jun 26, 2007
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  3. hoolyproductions

    hoolyproductions Notebook Evangelist

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    careful

    my macbook pro seems to recognise everything but my neighbours powerbook (also running Tiger) doesn't recognise my external USB drive...

    so it is not just determined by OS :)
     
    hoolyproductions, Jun 26, 2007
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  4. M@lew

    M@lew Notebook Evangelist

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    I'm pretty sure it recognises it. What you can do with it though depends on how it's formatted.
     
    M@lew, Jun 26, 2007
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  5. hoolyproductions

    hoolyproductions Notebook Evangelist

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    no.

    my WD usb hard drive is *not* recognised by a powerbook running OS X 10.4

    My MPB running the same OS recognises it fine :)
     
    hoolyproductions, Jun 26, 2007
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  6. mtor

    mtor Notebook Deity

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    All USB and firwire should work
     
    mtor, Jun 26, 2007
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  7. paj4x4

    paj4x4 Notebook Geek

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    Can an external drive previously used with XP run on Mac OS X? Is it a straight plug & play or the drive has to be reformatted? Thanks.
     
    paj4x4, Jun 30, 2007
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  8. Budding

    Budding Notebook Virtuoso

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    If the external drive is formatted NTFS, then OS X can only read from it. If it is FAT, then OS X can also write to it.
     
    Budding, Jun 30, 2007
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  9. paj4x4

    paj4x4 Notebook Geek

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    Thanks Budding. I'll check if its NTFS or FAT.

    If it's NTFS can I reformat it to FAT?
     
    paj4x4, Jun 30, 2007
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  10. Budding

    Budding Notebook Virtuoso

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    You can reformat a drive from NTFS to FAT, but you will lose all your data. You can go from FAT to NTFS without losing that, but that wouldn't be helpful in this situation.
     
    Budding, Jun 30, 2007
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  11. paj4x4

    paj4x4 Notebook Geek

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    I'll save my data on another drive before reformatting.

    By the way how do I reformat the drive? And should reformatting be done on the Mac? Thanks.
     
    paj4x4, Jun 30, 2007
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  12. jimboutilier

    jimboutilier Notebook Evangelist NBR Reviewer

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    All single USB and/or firewire drives will work but you should look for something like "mac compatible" in the literature if you want maximum piece of mind.

    Normally you can just reformat them if they are NTFS but some can include software that won't work with a Mac on special partitions that you can really only remove from a PC.

    You have to be more careful with units containomg multiple drives and or some sort of RAID or Network capability.

    I personally like the WD MyBooks. On my server at home I run 4x500gb in a RAID array (via OS X Disk Utility) for my server (an iMac). Thes work great with Intal Mac's and can even be shared via an Airport Extreme easily if you don't want to keep a server running for it.
     
    jimboutilier, Jun 30, 2007
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  13. taelrak

    taelrak Lost

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    My WD MyBook isn't readable on OSX at all. Just says disk isn't readable. Very annoying. Going to install boot camp to see if I can move the stuff out before I reformat it.
     
    taelrak, Jun 30, 2007
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  14. paj4x4

    paj4x4 Notebook Geek

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    I can't re-format my external HD from NTFS to FAT or FAT 32...

    Anyone with experience on this? By the way I've tried the command prompt in Windows XP to no avail.

    Thanks.
     
    paj4x4, Jul 1, 2007
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  15. jimboutilier

    jimboutilier Notebook Evangelist NBR Reviewer

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    While 32-bit Windows will recognize FAT partitions of any valid size, it limits the FORMAT utility to some very small values (don't quote me but I think 2gb for fat 16 and about 32gb for Fat32).

    You need to use a third party format utility (like Partition Magic) in windows to format partitions larger than that. Or from OS X you use disk utility and format FAT to full disk capacity pretty easily, then Windows boxes can easily read it (works at least up to 500gb).
     
    jimboutilier, Jul 1, 2007
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  16. paj4x4

    paj4x4 Notebook Geek

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    Thanks. I've partitioned an 80g ext HD into 3 (FAT 32) partitions. I will check out Partition Magic and the disk utility to bring it back to just 1 FAT 32 partition.
     
    paj4x4, Jul 1, 2007
    #16