[arthur]

hi i have some music that i keep in an external HD formatted for a mac. i want to transfer this data to another external HD that i can use with my PC at work. The manual for my external Maxstor states that one should not use the existing FAT format that comes with the HD to transfer files from one system to another.
 
any easy suggestions?

[shokunin]

Uh... I think FAT or FAT32 is probably the best formatting option if you want to transfer between systems, be it mac, linux, or pc.  Once you get into HFS, NTFS, XFS, etc there be more problems with one of the OS's being able to read or write to a non-FAT partition.

[circinus]

You have different options based on the file system type of your Windows formatted external drive. If the external PC drive is formatted FAT just connect it to your MAC, if Firewire or USB capable, and it will mount the file system for you. This is what I did to migrate from an old PC to a MAC. Another option is if the machines are on the same network (workgroup) and sharing is set up on the PC then do the following.

From the MAC click Go >Connect to server. In the network address dialog box type

smb://<Windows_PC_IPAddress>/sharename
OR
smb://<Windows_DNSname>/sharename

You will be prompted for the Windows workgroup name, username, and password.

Hope this helps.

[arthur]

thank you so much for your replies.
i'm not connected to a network and the goal is to just move the files from my mac formatted external HD into another external HD which will be used with a windows XP. the HD comes with FAT 32 formatting but for some reason the manual states that it's not a good idea to keep it in this format to transfer files between different systems.

thank you

[circinus]

I have no idea why Maxtor would recommend against FAT32 for file transfer. FAT32 partitions are recognized and supported in Windows 98 and above, MacOSX, and even Linux. There are limitations to file size because of the cluster size in FAT32 but I seriously doubt you have files that will exceed this limit, especially if they are music files. Leave the drive formatted FAT32 because if you format it in MAC OSX it will be unusable on your Windows PC. Attach the drive to your MAC, copy the files to the drive, and then attach it to your PC.