external hard drive format?

goaliedad · Jul 20, 2006

OK Geeks- my son (the goalie) bought a new Mac laptop- we have an old HP with his Itune collection. I borrowed an external hard drive to transfer the itunes. I know it has be formatted in FAT or FAT32. When I hook it up to our antique I am not given the FAT choice. The old PC is running window ex, but the USB port is 1.0.

Any ideas? ethernet connection?

thanks in advance.

Bt the way- I meant GEEKS in the nice way!

jwstewar · Jul 20, 2006

The old PC is running window ex

Windows what????

When you say that it won't give you the choice of FAT does it give you FAT32? Why not use that? The Mac should recognize it and I believe FAT will only recognize a drive up 540 MB......so FAT32 should be the way to go.

goaliedad · Jul 20, 2006

sorry about the typing- windows xp. the only option for formating is ntfs.

Knute · Jul 20, 2006

You can only use FAT on partitions up to 2 gig, over that you have to use FAT32 or NTFS (on Windows), and depending on the size of the partition you may well be limited to NTFS.

This page might help: http://www.macdisk.com/hugdsken.php3

MossRoad · Jul 21, 2006

No CD burner available? How about a USB pen drive? Flash memory? MP3 player? Anything with a memory chip and a USB connector should work.

Can you FDISK the external drive and just make one small partition under 500M and format that with FAT? Lots of choices.

hudr · Jul 21, 2006

I assume the drive you borrowed has no info that the person who loaned it to you wants to keep, right?
Won't Mac OSX read NTFS, but just not write it? If so, format the thing in NTFS, copy the files to it, then plug into the Mac and read/copy away. I don't think the USB1.0/2.0 should be an issue except w/ speed.

goaliedad · Jul 22, 2006

Hudr, you are correct. We did one song as a test and it worked fine. Late last night we transfered the library to the external, today after work my son is going to move it to hs Mac. And now my antique is no longer running low on memory.

Thanks to all.

Holzster · Jul 27, 2006

HUDR

Do I see a little Linux in you also? Answered that like a pro!!

hudr · Jul 31, 2006

Holzster said:
HUDR

Do I see a little Linux in you also? Answered that like a pro!!

Yes, I have played a bit (or is it byte?) w/ the "alternative" OS's. Even wound up at full-geek level of AIX one dark and dreary night over a HDD head crash.
But, I have to admit, I still make my $$$ off of Microsoft.