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Printable Version of Topic "external hardrive for mac and pc"

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-- Posted by EyelashWishes at 6:55 am on July 10, 2009

wel yeah basically i need an external hardrive which is compatible with my macbook and my windows xp pc
my old seagate is only compatible to one or the other if i format it accordingly
but i wanted to use it for both my mac and pc to transfer files between them.
does anyone have any ideas what makes i should look for? i was wanting it at least 500gb, perhaps a terabyte in size

thanks


-- Posted by Milky Way kid at 6:58 am on July 10, 2009

i have one that is really good. Its called a Freecom

www.freecom.com

the samsung one is great =)


-- Posted by rileyy at 6:59 am on July 10, 2009

I have a 500GB time capsule and I love it, it's wireless


-- Posted by Maxie at 7:00 am on July 10, 2009

I suggest Western Digital, they're pretty reliable. Also I'd suggest you pay a little extra for external SATA, the speed increase is very nice.


-- Posted by musicfan3 at 7:00 am on July 10, 2009

Quote: from Reece Dodsworth at 8:58 am on July 10, 2009


i have one that is really good. Its called a Freecom

www.freecom.com

the samsung one is great =)


Samsung stuff is always really good. And you do know that Shakesphere is one word right? (your sig).


-- Posted by Milky Way kid at 7:01 am on July 10, 2009

Quote: from musicfan3 at 3:00 pm on July 10, 2009


Quote: from Reece Dodsworth at 8:58 am on July 10, 2009

i have one that is really good. Its called a Freecom  

 www.freecom.com  

 the samsung one is great =)


Samsung stuff is always really good. And you do know that Shakesphere is one word right? (your sig).


Phhhsss =) Quiet don't tell anyone =) Thanks XD


-- Posted by musicfan3 at 7:03 am on July 10, 2009

Quote: from Reece Dodsworth at 9:01 am on July 10, 2009


Quote: from musicfan3 at 3:00 pm on July 10, 2009

Quote: from Reece Dodsworth at 8:58 am on July 10, 2009

i have one that is really good. Its called a Freecom

  www.freecom.com

  the samsung one is great =)


 

 Samsung stuff is always really good. And you do know that Shakesphere is one word right? (your sig).


Phhhsss =) Quiet don't tell anyone =) Thanks XD


Haha your welcome. Even I mess up my words but thats cause I get lazy sometimes..


-- Posted by Milky Way kid at 7:04 am on July 10, 2009

Quote: from musicfan3 at 3:03 pm on July 10, 2009


Quote: from Reece Dodsworth at 9:01 am on July 10, 2009

Quote: from musicfan3 at 3:00 pm on July 10, 2009

Quote: from Reece Dodsworth at 8:58 am on July 10, 2009

i have one that is really good. Its called a Freecom    

  www.freecom.com    

  the samsung one is great =)


  Samsung stuff is always really good. And you do know that Shakesphere is one word right? (your sig).


 

 Phhhsss =) Quiet don't tell anyone =) Thanks XD


Haha your welcome. Even I mess up my words but thats cause I get lazy sometimes..


O god you should see me on msn... nothing is spelt right... Its a puzzle to understand me ^-^


-- Posted by musicfan3 at 7:07 am on July 10, 2009

Quote: from Reece Dodsworth at 9:04 am on July 10, 2009


Quote: from musicfan3 at 3:03 pm on July 10, 2009

Quote: from Reece Dodsworth at 9:01 am on July 10, 2009

Quote: from musicfan3 at 3:00 pm on July 10, 2009

Quote: from Reece Dodsworth at 8:58 am on July 10, 2009

i have one that is really good. Its called a Freecom

   www.freecom.com

   the samsung one is great =)


   

  Samsung stuff is always really good. And you do know that Shakesphere is one word right? (your sig).


  Phhhsss =) Quiet don't tell anyone =) Thanks XD


 

 Haha your welcome. Even I mess up my words but thats cause I get lazy sometimes..


O god you should see me on msn... nothing is spelt right... Its a puzzle to understand me ^-^


Well msn doesn't count cause your talking to your friends and those are the ones who know you best so they're not gonna nazi you over grammar like some of these jerks on here.


-- Posted by Stormblazer at 4:43 pm on July 10, 2009

I recommend you buy an internal drive off newegg that has good reviews from users, then buy a separate external enclosure (one with eSATA support is nice too if your computer has it).

If you just buy some external drive, you never know what piece of junk they actually stuck inside the thing usually.

Western Digital has been pretty reliable in my experience, but as with any new harddrive just back stuff up initially before using it for real storage - when harddrives fail, they usually fail either quickly, or after a very long time, so


-- Posted by espresso8097 at 5:15 pm on July 10, 2009

To the best of my knowledge FAT formats are readable/writable in OS X, as well as Windows.

And it is possible to write (and reading is done by default) to NTFS partitions by downloading and installing NTFS-3g.

Here is the stuff to try to get OS X to read/write to NTFS (if that is what your current one if formatted as).  


-- Posted by wind at 7:00 pm on July 10, 2009

yeah technically wouldn't you just either have to make osx be able to read NTFS or just format in FAT 32 where both windows and OSX can read it??


-- Posted by Stormblazer at 8:09 pm on July 10, 2009

Quote: from wind at 8:00 pm on July 10, 2009


yeah technically wouldn't you just either have to make osx be able to read NTFS or just format in FAT 32 where both windows and OSX can read it??
Well, I know that Linux has drivers for NTFS, so it wouldn't surprise me if OSX does as well.
FAT32 works on everything sure, but its got downsides. For example, no file can be larger than 4GB, and fragmentation is a real issue if you plan to use the drive much.


-- Posted by espresso8097 at 9:17 pm on July 10, 2009

Quote: from Stormblazer at 10:09 pm on July 10, 2009


Quote: from wind at 8:00 pm on July 10, 2009

yeah technically wouldn't you just either have to make osx be able to read NTFS or just format in FAT 32 where both windows and OSX can read it??
Well, I know that Linux has drivers for NTFS, so it wouldn't surprise me if OSX does as well.
FAT32 works on everything sure, but its got downsides. For example, no file can be larger than 4GB, and fragmentation is a real issue if you plan to use the drive much.

I was meaning to put a link to the NTFS-3g (*nix drivers for NTFS) for OS X in my post.

http://macntfs-3g.blogspot.com/


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