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    Will Mac Hard Drives Work for PCs?

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by Forte, Jul 7, 2008.

  1. Forte

    Forte NBR's Supreme Angel

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    Forte, Jul 7, 2008
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  2. Duct Tape Dude

    Duct Tape Dude Duct Tape Dude

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    They will work except they're formatted differently-- Mac uses the HFS format (I think) and Windows uses NTFS/FAT32. Just make sure you reformat it before you use it and you should be fine :)
     
    Duct Tape Dude, Jul 7, 2008
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  3. Sam

    Sam Notebook Virtuoso

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    It will work fine! As dtd00d noted, just reformat it for NTFS as its most likely formatted as HFS+ for Mac OS X right now :).
     
    Sam, Jul 7, 2008
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  4. Forte

    Forte NBR's Supreme Angel

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    So the hard drive I'm looking at on that page. Is it the exact same part # as say a windows version of the hard drive?

    Are these drives usually preformatted at the manufacturing stage? Or do resellers reformat it for the mac?

    I just chatted with support who said that the drives came right out of manufacturing and were not reformatted or anything.

    Is there a benefit to drives that are preformatted with NTFS/FAT as opposed to formatting to it later?
     
    Forte, Jul 7, 2008
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  5. Bauer418

    Bauer418 Notebook Evangelist

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    When you buy a drive it will (unless otherwise specified) come unformatted. You can easily format it yourself and it won't be any different than a "Windows" drive (not that such drive exists...). It'll work fine, don't worry :)
     
    Bauer418, Jul 7, 2008
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  6. Forte

    Forte NBR's Supreme Angel

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    So if I just pop in the the hard drive fresh out of the box into my laptop, will Windows automatically prompt to format it at startup? Or do I have to buy an enclosure to do so?

    (Im planning on installing Vista on it fresh, not cloning my current hard drive.)
     
    Forte, Jul 7, 2008
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  7. E30kid

    E30kid Notebook Deity

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    I would just pop it into the laptop and format the Hard Drive with Parted Magic. It works really well, as it includes GParted for partitioning.
     
    E30kid, Jul 7, 2008
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  8. Forte

    Forte NBR's Supreme Angel

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    Um, how would I format it if the operating system is installed on the other hard drive? Does the computer have its own built in formatting mechanism that does it when you do a fresh install of Vista or something?
     
    Forte, Jul 7, 2008
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  9. Johnny T

    Johnny T Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    Do you have any Vista installation disc or recovery discs?
     
    Johnny T, Jul 7, 2008
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  10. Forte

    Forte NBR's Supreme Angel

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    Yes, I have Vista installation discs. I was under the impression that I could stick in a Vista disc upon putting in my new HD, and any repartitioning that occurs will automatically format the harddrive. Is this true?
     
    Forte, Jul 7, 2008
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  11. Johnny T

    Johnny T Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    I am not too familiar with Vista myself, but choose your optical drive as the booting device and then restart and pop in the disc, it should boot from the disc and then you should have the options for things in terms of partitions and formatting. :)
     
    Johnny T, Jul 7, 2008
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  12. Forte

    Forte NBR's Supreme Angel

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    Sweet. Now I just have to decide between 500GB Samsung 7200 or the WD Scorpio 320GB 7200. Thanks a lot!
     
    Forte, Jul 7, 2008
    #12