Hi all,

I did a brief search that didn't answer my question. I stored photos and music from my old PC on an external HD. What I'd like to do is plug in the HD and access the info - is it that simple?

TIA,

-Jay

 

Yes MAC will see it but being it was formatted in FAT32 you can not delete with the MAC. I use a 3TB WD for all my music and it is now connected to a MACBOOK AIR but in order to move things on and off I have to do it on my PC at office. Its all a formatting issue not a drive issue.

 

When you say I'm unable to delete with the MAC do you mean I couldn't take a photo/music file from the HD and use it?

Thank you!

 

It all depends on how the drive is formatted. It's most likely to be either FAT32 or NTFS. If you right click on the drive and choose Info, it will tell you what format it is.

Most Macs should be able to access the data that you have on the drive i.e you can view the photo's and play the music etc. You should also be able to copy the data off this drive to the drive in your Mac. However you might not be able to add any more to the external drive from your Mac - depending on it's format. It will show up as Read Only.

For some Mac programs like iMovie, you cannot use a drive unless it has been formatted specifically for Mac. There is a disk utility program that all Macs have that will allow you to do this. The format to choose is Mac OS X Extended, and this will give you the most Mac compatibility. However many PC's will no longer be able to read this drive.

Also formatting the drive will delete ALL of the data on it, so don't do this unless you have it all backed up somewhere.

So anyway, plug the drive into your Mac and see if you can access the data. If you can, and that's all you need then don't worry about formatting it.