How can I get a USB HD to work with both PC and Mac?

[GoingUp]

My sister has a one year old laptop with OSX10.2

I just got her a 160GB hard drive for christmas. I want to load up a bunch of pictures and music she has before I give it to her.

I only have PCs. How can I format the drive to make a Mac still able to see it?

Thanks!

 

[HDTVMan]

Since your 10.2 better to format with FAT32. 10.2 is flaky with NTFS. 10.3 is better.

I wonder if you partition a section with FAT32 and the rest with NTFS how it would work. First partitiong FAT32. I do this and it comes in very handy when you need a FAT partition because your GHOSTING your OS since ghost boots dont read NTFS.

 

[chcarnage]

Since it's unlikely that your sister is going to reformat the HD, I'd try to use the HFS+ format, because OS X is meant to run with this. If you use another format on a Mac, you lose some functionality (Window sizes and positions, icons I think, and other metadata).

There is some software available to work with HFS+ volumes on a Windows PC, however I don't know how good it is.
HFVExplorer
MacDrive

But the most important thing is to avoid NTFS, it's a badly documented or patent tied format that works horribly on the Mac, last time I checked Macs didn't have write support for it.

 

[erwos]

Originally posted by: chcarnage
Since it's unlikely that your sister is going to reformat the HD, I'd try to use the HFS+ format, because OS X is meant to run with this. If you use another format on a Mac, you lose some functionality (Window sizes and positions, icons I think, and other metadata).

I was under the impression that MacOS X just stored the metadata in a different way, not that it discarded it.

I'd go with FAT32/VFAT for this one.

-Erwos

 

[GoingUp]

Can I format all 160GB as one Fat32 partition?

I forget the size limit of a fat 32 partition. Is it 32GB?

 

[HDTVMan]

There is a FAT48 hack but I dont recommend it. I can almost guarantee the mac wont understand it and will most certainly have problems.

I have messed with HFS without much luck. Too much conversion.

I recommend formatting the first partition FAT32 to the max and then the rest NTFS.

 

[GoingUp]

What about burning everything on DVDs, taking the DVDs and HD into compusa and using the in store MACs to transfer everything?