Moving to an iMac

Mr109 · 17 Sep 2008 at 11:31

Hi All,

I will soon be moving to iMac from PC. I want to use my existing, NTFS formatted, hard disk to copy my music and photos across. I would then like to keep this to backup music and documents to use with Vista (via bootcamp) and my windows laptop.

The question, will the iMac be able to read / write to this disk?

Regards

Al

Slogan · 17 Sep 2008 at 11:35

It can read NTFS but it can't write to it.

You'd be better off using the mac format on the external drive (Mac OS Extended) and using 'MacDrive' on the Windows side of things to read/write to it.

Hamish · 17 Sep 2008 at 12:20

You have 3 options here:

1) install NTFS 3G Driver on your mac to allow writing to NTFS

2) Install MacDrive on your Windows PC and use Mac OS File System.

3) Use FAT32 for maximum compatibility but realise that you can't have files bigger than 4Gb and your drive will become more fragmented over time.

Personally I would choose option 1 over Option 2 as MacDrive isn't free. Apart from that the choice is between 1 and 3 depending on what you keep on the drive I guess.

Mr109 · 18 Sep 2008 at 11:47

Thanks Gents,

All the stuff from google was a couple of years old but said the same.

I think I'll keep any big files to stream in windows via bootcamp and fat32 the external hard disk, defragging it now and again.

NTFS 3G seems a little buggy still, and I'm after simplicity itself.

Al

MagicBoy · 18 Sep 2008 at 13:23

Anyone tried this? : http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/

Is it just NTFS-3G with a corporate sticker on it?

I got a freebie copy on a coverdisk the other week...

Methanoid · 19 Sep 2008 at 22:58

Works perfectly well for me... (Paragon).... I'm gonna have a look at the free one too

MikeHunt79 · 20 Sep 2008 at 00:09

Nice, I've been trying to write to NTFS under OSX and failing. Didn't know extra software would allow this.

Bod · 21 Sep 2008 at 03:01

I basically moved my externals over to the mac, then emptied them one by one (by shoving stuff off onto other drives to clear one.....then formatting the empty one to Mac OS...then copying stuff back to it).

Took a wee while, but everything is now Mac OS. I'm not going back to windows, so there's no point really.

mark66 · 21 Sep 2008 at 09:32

Are there any other free alternatives to MacDrive? I also went the iMac route thinking I wouldn't be using Windows again, but then decided to try Boot Camp as I wanted to play COH. I now want to be able to backup my Steam folder to my External HardDrive but it is formatted in Mac OSF?