[kbuzz3]

Hello all im a mac newbie. I have a large collection of music stored on a usb hardrive created by a pc.  Im not sure what its formatted to but probably not the FAT type.  I now have a mac laptop and extreme base station which has a usb port> mac formatted usb drive.

My SB will arrive next week. Can the Squeeze center play any pc formatted drive plugged into the UEBS? If not can one "reformat" the drive with data on it already to make it playable?

Or does one have to buy a new drive-format it to something like FAT and copy the pc usb drive to the new drive over a pc so the mac can read it.

Thanks for the help all.

PS can someone reccomend a usb hub for use with the AEBS so i can add one or two drives at the same time .....

[Crimson]

Macs can read/write to FAT32-formatted drives, but can only read NTFS-formatted drives. You cannot format a drive with data on it without wiping the data. If you plan on using a drive that both Macs and PC's need to read/write to, you'll need to format a drive using FAT32. Your best bet would be to then copy all the files over to your newly formatted drive, and not plug an NTFS formatted drive into the AEBS. As far as hubs go, any powered USB 2.0-compliant hub should do. I use a few them made by Belkin.

[kbuzz3]

Your best bet would be to then copy all the files over to your newly formatted drive, and not plug an NTFS formatted drive into the AEBS.

Thanks crimson, equally stupid question, but i assume that i need to format a new drive to FAT 32 via a mac but use the pc to copy over to the newly formatted drive. ie plug both into the pc for transfer?

[Crimson]

Your best bet would be to then copy all the files over to your newly formatted drive, and not plug an NTFS formatted drive into the AEBS.

Thanks crimson, equally stupid question, but i assume that i need to format a new drive to FAT 32 via a mac but use the pc to copy over to the newly formatted drive. ie plug both into the pc for transfer?

You can format on either a PC or MAC, and do the transfer on either as well. One point: when formatting to FAT32 on a MAC, you must select the 'MS-DOS' method of formatting.

[Ferdi]

One more thing. If it is NTFS formatted, I remember having read about a set of drivers that can make OSX read and write NTFS. You could look into this but given your self-confessed Newbie status, maybe too big a hurdle.

Good luck!