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    Portable External HDD (2.5) for Macs

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by stevenjchang, Apr 20, 2009.

  1. stevenjchang

    stevenjchang Notebook Enthusiast

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    hey

    my friend just asked me to find him a portable drive (320 or 500), but has a mac.

    the seagate freeagent go's for Macs are about 50% more expensive than their counterparts

    can someone explain to me why? what's so different (besides having firewire800) - can the normal freeagent go's be used on a mac if i just reformat the disc...????

    and if so, reformat to what? FAT32?
     
    stevenjchang, Apr 20, 2009
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  2. Greg

    Greg Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    There is nothing different between external enclosures for PCs and for Apple machines. They're just trying to gouge the Apple owners, since they drink all that cool-aid and everything ;). You get the idea. Actually, FW800 would be a reason for a small price hike but not 50%...

    Format the new one to FAT32, and maybe it would even work with NTFS I'm not sure, and you'd be fine.
     
    Greg, Apr 20, 2009
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  3. stevenjchang

    stevenjchang Notebook Enthusiast

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    two follow up questions

    will it work with NTFS out the box (and usb2.0)

    will it be able to work in a cross platform? or only on macs?
     
    stevenjchang, Apr 20, 2009
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  4. Greg

    Greg Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    As far as I know, OSX does support NTFS so yes it should work out of the box. I might be wrong on this, please check with someone who owns an Apple. USB is USB, it will work on any system.

    It will work cross platform. That is the point of having standardized partition formats and file formats.
     
    Greg, Apr 21, 2009
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  5. ZaZ

    ZaZ Super Model Super Moderator

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    Actually OS X can only read from NTFS partitions. It cannot write to them. You can format it Fat32, but that will limit file sizes to 4GB. You can just format it to HFS, which is Macs's file system because as noted, there's nothing special about the hardware. My external Seagate drive worked fine hooked to my Mac, when it was formatted to HFS.
     
    ZaZ, Apr 21, 2009
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  6. bball3904

    bball3904 Notebook Enthusiast

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    I concur with Greg, the 'Mac' Hard Drives are a marketing scheme presented to consumers who don't know better. My recommendation is to buy the Western Digital 320GB Passport Essentials. They make the best 2.5" hard drives, based on reliability and performance, and the price is quite reasonable.

    I had the same dilemma two months ago, with my unibody Macbook, that you are currently experiencing. If your friend is willing, install MacFuse and NTFS-3G ( NTFS-3G Homepage). Between these two programs you can read and write to any format of hard drive. Then you can format the new HDD to NTFS, which allows it to be run on any type of computer.
     
    bball3904, Apr 26, 2009
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