but... I have a computer question. Does anyone here, know for sure if a computer hard drive can be formatted for FAT32, and thus read and writeable by both Mac and PC platform computers, just like a flash drive or memory card? I own both type computers and was wondering about this. I have heard that using a Drobo unit, which uses eSata drives, basically computer hard drives, that they can be formatted this way, i.e. FAT32. Are there pros and cons to doing this? Can a portable external hard drive, either FW or USB be formatted in such a way??? Thanks in advance for any help, Don
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maybe not the right place..
- Thread starter DonWeston
- Start date
Guy Mancuso
Administrator, Instructor
Don I will move this to the gear garage for you. Thanks Guy
Guy - thanks, forgot about this section of the site, very useful. I have read elsewhere in the mean time that it is possible and others who run both Mac and PC platforms do this. Just wondering the pros and cons. Also how one goes about partitioning an existing hard drive [internal] so that one can use some space for this. Thanks...Don
Not exactly sure what you need to know, but let me try. If you format a drive as FAT 32 you can read files stored on it off a PC or Mac. However, boot drives need to be in the proprietary system format so any single drive used for both would need to be partitioned for both. An alternative for Mac users is installing Fusion or Parallels on the Mac formatted drive. These will run Win in a virtual window inside of Leopard.
Jack - thanks, yes something like that. I recently bought a Imac as a new computer after having and using mostly PCs for years. I am interested in buying another external hard drive to backup. My old one is accessible for reading files that was used with my old PC but I obviously can't save new or reworked files to it. As I still own other PC's, I am interested in being able to read those and work those files as well. I have heard yesterday that there might be two options more also, first buy a Drobo and eSata drives and format them FAT32 or buy Macdrive.com for use on my PC's, that allows you to read and write mac type formatted files, at least to the best of my knowledge so far. I wanted to look into my options and try to come up with a "best" solution if there is such a thing. Have you heard of any of these things or have a familiarity with them?? BTW - love the new Mac and wonder why it took me so long to come over....
D
dlew308
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