- Apr 7, 2012
- 144
- 0
- 76
So I have two 2TB external hard drives. One is with my PC and is formatted in NTFS. I use it for data storage. The other was for my MacBook Pro and was formatted in OS X Extended Journaled (their proprietary format that works with their Time Machine backup software).
So I wiped the Mac hard drive, and I reformatted it into exFAT because I want to be able to use it with both my MacBook and my PC. Now I want to copy all of the data on the NTFS drive to the exFAT so I can also reformat the NTFS to exFAT. This way I will have two hard drives that are intercompatible with either computer. I tried a simply copy/paste, but many of the files have names that are too long for the destination drive, or have other issues. There are no applications installed on this drive, btw.
I've used Robocopy before with its shell commands, but it makes me nervous. I experienced a small disaster in the past when I inappropriately used the mirror command. Instead, I tried using a simple freeware called "PC Disk Clone". Unfortunately, the "Disk to Disk" clone feature apparently needs the destination disk to be RAW. It says the disk is not empty and that I must remove the partition. So it's impossible for me to clone the data from the source drive in NTFS to the destination drive in exFAT. It wants to clone the NTFS partition itself.
So how would you guys suggest I most simply clone all the data from the NTFS to the exFAT?
So I wiped the Mac hard drive, and I reformatted it into exFAT because I want to be able to use it with both my MacBook and my PC. Now I want to copy all of the data on the NTFS drive to the exFAT so I can also reformat the NTFS to exFAT. This way I will have two hard drives that are intercompatible with either computer. I tried a simply copy/paste, but many of the files have names that are too long for the destination drive, or have other issues. There are no applications installed on this drive, btw.
I've used Robocopy before with its shell commands, but it makes me nervous. I experienced a small disaster in the past when I inappropriately used the mirror command. Instead, I tried using a simple freeware called "PC Disk Clone". Unfortunately, the "Disk to Disk" clone feature apparently needs the destination disk to be RAW. It says the disk is not empty and that I must remove the partition. So it's impossible for me to clone the data from the source drive in NTFS to the destination drive in exFAT. It wants to clone the NTFS partition itself.
So how would you guys suggest I most simply clone all the data from the NTFS to the exFAT?