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MacBook Pro 13in and external hard drives

  • 26-12-2013 11:06am
    #1
    Hedgecutter
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,041 ✭✭✭


    I'm considering buying an MacBook pro and someone told me I might have to format my memory sticks and external hard drive to the device and that I could lose what's on the memory sticks and hard drives.

    Is this true?


Comments

  • #2
    5uspect
    Moderators, Arts Moderators Posts: 10,518 Mod ✭✭✭✭5uspect


    Yes and no. OS X will work fine with FAT32 formatted drives. This is what you'll find on most USB sticks. Some external hard drives are formatted in Microsofts NTFS file system and OS X can read from this but not write. You can get it working but there is a better alternative.
    ExFAT was developed by Microsoft to fix file size limitations of FAT which can only store files smaller than 4GB and works with OS X.

    So if your drives are all FAT32 then you're grand. If your drives are NTFS then you're going to have to think about more portable file systems.
    Of course there's nothing stopping you copying the contents of the drive to your Mac or another drive, formatting the drive in Disk Utility and copying the contents back.


  • #3
    Hedgecutter
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,041 ✭✭✭Hedgecutter


    5uspect wrote: »
    Yes and no. OS X will work fine with FAT32 formatted drives. This is what you'll find on most USB sticks. Some external hard drives are formatted in Microsofts NTFS file system and OS X can read from this but not write. You can get it working but there is a better alternative.
    ExFAT was developed by Microsoft to fix file size limitations of FAT which can only store files smaller than 4GB and works with OS X.

    So if your drives are all FAT32 then you're grand. If your drives are NTFS then you're going to have to think about more portable file systems.
    Of course there's nothing stopping you copying the contents of the drive to your Mac or another drive, formatting the drive in Disk Utility and copying the contents back.

    Thanks, if the drives are not formatted to the mac will it allow my transfer from drive to mac?


  • #4
    Zcott
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,206 ✭✭✭Zcott


    Hedgecutter wrote: »
    Thanks, if the drives are not formatted to the mac will it allow my transfer from drive to mac?

    Yep, you should be able to copy to Mac no bother.


  • #5
    shamelessidiot
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 516 ✭✭✭shamelessidiot


    I had this issue when I found an old harddrive a while back – I just downloaded a little tweak (NTFS-3G) from the internet and now reading/writing works perfectly fine with my NTFS formatted drives. It just adds a preference pane, so no big obtrusive apps to deal with.


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