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Can an external HD (formatted NTFS) be used on a mac?

aphex

aphex

Moderator<br>All Things Apple
Moderator
I plan on taking my 250gb Maxtor out of my PC and using it as an external drive on my soon to be mac mini...

Will i be able to read the data currenlty on it when i hook it into the mini? (via FW)
 
Originally posted by: aphex
I plan on taking my 250gb Maxtor out of my PC and using it as an external drive on my soon to be mac mini...

Will i be able to read the data currenlty on it when i hook it into the mini? (via FW)
Click to expand...

Yep.
 
You can read NTFS on a mac, but because MS has kept their journalling specs and stuff like that closed, you can't write. Windows NT based OSes are the only ones that can write to NTFS. It sucks.
 
Originally posted by: hopejr
You can read NTFS on a mac, but because MS has kept their journalling specs and stuff like that closed, you can't write. Windows NT based OSes are the only ones that can write to NTFS. It sucks.
Click to expand...

Well that sucks... So my best option would be to plug it into the mini, dump my 40gb of info into the mac, then reformat the external drive?

BTW, three of you gave differering answers... who is correct? 🙂
 
Originally posted by: aphex
Originally posted by: hopejr
You can read NTFS on a mac, but because MS has kept their journalling specs and stuff like that closed, you can't write. Windows NT based OSes are the only ones that can write to NTFS. It sucks.
Click to expand...

Well that sucks... So my best option would be to plug it into the mini, dump my 40gb of info into the mac, then reformat the external drive?

BTW, three of you gave differering answers... who is correct? 🙂
Click to expand...

We both are. You'd asked if you could read the disk on a Mac. I answered yes; it's true - you can. However, if you want to write too (you didn't ask that) then you'd probably want to reformat it with HTFS+ and journaling. Of course, if you reformat it, the PC won't read it. If you really need to move it back and forth, make FAT32 partitions.
 
Sadly Fat32 is the only filesystem both the MAC and PC read so you have to use that on your external drive if you want both the PC and mac to read it.
 
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