NTFS and Mac OS

W

worldseries34

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Hey guys I’m new to the Mac thing. I ordered a macbook that I’m going to use for school and music and such while my pc is for games, but to get to the point. All my music is on my 120 GB external HD. I've read around and it seems that the Mac OS can only read NTFS is what it sounds like. But I’m still a little confused. So I just want to get a straight answer.

1. Will I be able to copy all 12 gigs of my music to my new Mac from an NTFS external hard drive?
2. Will any of my other files on the hard drive be harmed?
3. Is the transfer process safer?
4. Would I be better off reformatting it to FAT32 so I can switch my hard drive from PC to Mac?

Thanks,
Tom
 
You should be able to copy from the hard drive to the mac - just not write from the mac on the NTFS side.

FAT32 could work if you need read and write access on both systems. However FAT32 can be formatted only to up to 32 GB partitions, so you wouldd need to partition the hard drive to 4 or have one partition of 32 GB or less and the other partition(s) as NTFS.
 
I've seen FAT32 partitions much bigger than 32 GB. For example my 300 GB harddrive came FAT32 formatted. One volume. No problem there. The problem with FAT32 rather is the max. file size limitation.
 
The FAT32 32GB limitation is a limitation of Window's formatting ability, not of the FAT32 format itself.

For some reason, under some Windows versions (2000 Pro? XP? Me?), you can only format a FAT32 volume a maximum of 32GB -- but FAT32 drives support formats much larger than 32GB.
 
but to answer your questions
1) yes
2) no
3) safer than what?
4) only if you need to copy large file between your mac and pc alot. just remember, in order to change the drive to fat32 from ntsf, all info on the drive will be erased. so make sure that you copy eveything you want off the hard drive to your mac or pc.

my take on the fat32 limit thingy, my dad did somehow format an 80gig drive to fat32 with one partition in windows 98. now, i don't know if he used win98, fdisk, or the software that came with the drive, but he did do it.
 
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