Mac Virgin

skunksta · 20 Sep 2010 at 20:20

just got a 2nd hand mac and wanted to buy a external dvd.
But as the title says not 100% sure if all modern drives are
compatible for both mac and pc or as in most things some
are and some are not.I would want one that works on both.

Thanks

Brian8bit · 20 Sep 2010 at 21:00

If it's USB or Firewire 400 or 800 it'll be compatible. Hard drives are hard drives. All that changes is the file system. Note that some OS's can't read other OS's file systems. If you want to use it just with OS X, you can format it with the Mac OS Extended file system. If you want any Windows machines to be able to read it as well, you'll need to format it with FAT32 which OS X can read. I don't know if OS X can read NTFS though, but it should.

skunksta · 20 Sep 2010 at 21:45

So any USB DVDROM external drive should work with my mac.
thanks for the info.Thought i might need to look for compatible 1s.

Brian8bit · 20 Sep 2010 at 21:51

External DVD. I read the original post as external HDD. So ignore my post unless you're after an external HDD

External DVD drives should be compatible regardless of what brand they are. If you're planning on booting from it though, I'm not sure how you would go about that.

startrek2 · 20 Sep 2010 at 22:10

dont buy one of the mac book superdrives for the mac air... it wont work,,

its for mac air and latest macbook pros only....... but other wise any windows based dvd will work