On 14/08/2006, at 2:38 PM, Paul Weaver wrote:
There are quite a lot of cheap external HD units formatted only for
Windows.
My son bought a Maxtor for his Windows machine today. I persuaded
him to
let me try it on the iMac OS X 10.3.9 It came up on the desktop OK
and can
be opened, but will not allow transfer of files from the Mac.
Seeing as they are much cheaper than Mac compatible Maxtor models
(if you
can find them) I am wondering if anyone has reformatted one for Mac
and what
is involved?
Yes, they can be formatted for Macs, Disk Utility will do the job for
you.
You cant write to your son's because it may be formated as NTFS,
Windows only basically.
If you want both Mac and Windows to use it, I believe if you need to
use 'MS-DOS File System'
Depending on the size of drive you use you may have to create some
partitions as MS-DOS File System has a maximum partition size that I
cant remember right now.
Disk Utility makes this easy. Try Help.
I shopped around till I found an enclosure at the right price and did
the same for the drive itself and I saved a pretty penny.
By memory I got a Western Digital 160GB for $100, I think the
enclosure was around $50-60.
Childs play to fit the drive in the enclosure(I left the too-bright
LED disconnected;).
Good luck
Paul
