Transferring files (hard drive formats..)

[ianhumph]

Hi! I'm sure there is a simple answer to this..

My friend Steve is about to acquire (next week) an Apple Macintosh laptop (nice..!)

In addition to this, he intends buying two (one for backup, of course..) external hard drives.  He currently uses a PC employing Microsoft Windows. I suggested that he transfers some of the content that is already on the PC's external drives (for space saving and convenience). He is fairly sure that the external drives that he will be buying need to be formatted first to work on the Mac. Thus, rendering the drives only usable on said machine.. I assumed that it would be a easy as this...(?)

1) Connecting one of NEW, empty drives to the PC's USB - to transfer the required files and then..

2) ..simply copying the files from the drive which now contains the freshly copied files to the empty external - on the Mac (assuming it has two USB ports, but why would it not have?)  

Having only ever used Windows (and my friend likewise), we are more than a bit puzzled by this discussion. I hope that I've explained the situation reasonably clearly so others may be able to point us in the right direction...:-/

Thanks Guys!!

[Mark Hennessy]

Hi Ian,

I'm not a Mac expert, but I'm fairly sure that a Mac will be able to read the external drives with no problem. They will probably come formatted as FAT32, or perhaps NTFS, both of which are "native" formats to a modern-ish PC. I know that Linux has no problems reading FAT32 or NTFS, and I'd be amazed if a MAC wasn't able to read these as well. Perhaps writing to an NTFS drive might be a problem - does anyone know?

In other words, it should be "plug and play".

Cheers,

Mark

[tiv48]

this may help http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Format_Your_Mac_Hard_Drive
rob t

[ianhumph]

Thank you both for the responses guys!

Rob, I've just had a quick look at the link you kindly supplied- so I now know that it IS possible to copy the files he needs.

The main reason I thought I'd ask here, is that I had reasoned with myself that if I were to do a Google search, then things probably wouln't become very much clearer to me. Having just tried this- I was right (for a change!)

So thanks a million once again!!:D

..PLUS..
..if anybody can add anything else to this, then that would be fantastic!