Macbook question

[humanflyz]

So with the L3000s sold, I finally have the funds to replace my laptop, and I'm thinking of going Mac this time, as I've never used an Apple computer before and am curious.

My question is about hard drive compatibility. Currently I have a 300gig PATA hard drive in an external closure connected to my PC via USB. I am wondering if I need to format the HD to be compatible with OS X. If so, that will be a significant problem because all of my lossless music is stored on that drive.

[ojnihs]

holy fuck i completely fucked up the edit. blah

[humanflyz]

From what I recall correctly, I think that the G4 Mac Mini's shipped with PATA drives instead of SATA drives that they ship with now. So it should work just fine.

Well, I was asking more about the file systems. Windows XP uses NTFS, so that's how my hard drive in an external enclosure is formatted; but since OS X is a *Nix-based OS, do I have to format the hard drive to work with that particular file system?

[ojnihs]

Well, I was asking more about the file systems. Windows XP uses NTFS, so that's how my hard drive in an external enclosure is formatted; but since OS X is a *Nix-based OS, do I have to format the hard drive to work with that particular file system?

nope not at all. i actually had my external hard drive formatted to NTFS when I first got it and just used it that way for like a year. i ended up reformatting it to HFS+ since I know i won't be going to windows anytime

[mirumu]

Out of the box MacOS X can read and write to FAT32 formatted drives but can only read from NTFS ones. If you just want to read from the disc then that won't be a problem. If you really need to write too you can still do so but you will need to install the MacFuse userspace filesystem kernel module and the NTFS-3G driver. I use these myself and they work great.

[ojnihs]

Damn me I forgot that I had to use MacFuse

[mirumu]

i use MacFuse, mostly so that i can drop files into my Vista partition without turning on VMWare, and i don't think its reliable enough for real work. i would reformat the drive.

I've always found it completely reliable myself, I use it much the same way you do, but I do understand your concern given that it's reverse engineered and beta software. Certainly if it wrote the wrong byte to the wrong place there is potential it could corrupt the drive. If writing and complete reliability are important I'd second the call to reformat the drive.

[ojnihs]

i use MacFuse, mostly so that i can drop files into my Vista partition without turning on VMWare, and i don't think its reliable enough for real work. i would reformat the drive.

agreed. if you're planning on staying with mac for good, i would just go ahead and reformat it.

[humanflyz]

Well, here is my situation. I currently have a 300 gig HD in an enclosure that contains all of my lossless music. I have a 1 TB drive coming in that I will put in an enclosure. My question is, if I format the 1TB drive in HFS+, can I seamlessly and reliably transfer files from my NTFS drive to the HFS+ one?

If I can get an answer quickly enough, I might just get the Macbook today, because the student store has a really good education discount going right now.

[mirumu]

Well, here is my situation. I currently have a 300 gig HD in an enclosure that contains all of my lossless music. I have a 1 TB drive coming in that I will put in an enclosure. My question is, if I format the 1TB drive in HFS+, can I seamlessly and reliably transfer files from my NTFS drive to the HFS+ one?

Yes, that will work fine. OS X can read from NTFS no problem.

[archosman]

If you ever have to move more than 2 or 4 gigs of info I would reformat.

I primarily deal on the edit side of Mac. We've had people bring in their FCP projects and have us lay it out to tape. Anytime I tried to export back to their drive it would always tank. I finally ended up copying their entire contents to our raid, reformat their drive, and copy it right back.

Always let them know what I was doing. Most have no idea. They're already on a Mac anyway and aren't hooking the same drive up to a windows machine.

[mirumu]

If you ever have to move more than 2 or 4 gigs of info I would reformat.

I primarily deal on the edit side of Mac. We've had people bring in their FCP projects and have us lay it out to tape. Anytime I tried to export back to their drive it would always tank.

I find that happens a lot with external FAT32 drives. Many people format external drives and USB sticks as FAT32 as it handles drive ejection better than NTFS. The problem is that FAT32 doesn't support files larger than 4GB but MacOS X will still attempt to copy the file across anyway and fail at the 4GB limit with a cryptic error message that implies an internal OS X problem. Windows handles it a bit better by failing before doing the copy but the error message it gives makes you think the drive is full even if there's apparently more than enough space. This shouldn't be a problem with NTFS but yeah, if the drive is only ever going to be used with Macs then HFS+ is the way to go.

[humanflyz]

Oh no, the 1TB incoming drive will be formatted in HFS+, and my current external NTFS HD, after I copy everything across, will be formatted in FAT32 for widest compatibility. I don't anticipate running into the 4gig file size limit, because I don't do video editing/ripping.

[archosman]

You still might want to consider...

Better to do it now than get burned later...