Is this possible?

eckingecking
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
I want to take the 80GB hard drive out of an old emachines computer I have in the basement and put it into an enclosure to use with the mac mini I'll be getting.



If the emachines computer no longer works but the hard drive does and it wasn't wiped clean before the computer stopped working can it still be put in an external enclosure and formatted to use with a mac?



If so, how do you do that?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    jwink3101jwink3101 Posts: 739member
    That shouldn't be a problem at all. You will lose your emachines data in the proscess though. Just put it in the enxlise and turn it on how you normally would. Then, use Disk Utility to reformat it for HFS+.



    You will be able to read the emachines drive but not write to it if it is NTFS (which it probably is). If it is FAT32 (assuming its a really old computer w/o XP), you can read and write but filesizes will be limited to <4gb
  • Reply 2 of 8
    igrantigrant Posts: 180member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by ecking

    I want to take the 80GB hard drive out of an old emachines computer I have in the basement and put it into an enclosure to use with the mac mini I'll be getting.



    If the emachines computer no longer works but the hard drive does and it wasn't wiped clean before the computer stopped working can it still be put in an external enclosure and formatted to use with a mac?



    If so, how do you do that?



    I did the same thing with a 20 gig hard drive from a laptop, i just formated it to ms-dos file format and then went on my way, the best thing about mmacs is there ability to recognize software. Hope this helps



    -iGrant
  • Reply 3 of 8
    eckingecking Posts: 1,588member
    Thanks a lot guys! That's awesome, more and more I'm happy a switched! I really don't care about loosing what's on that emachines hard drive I haven't used that computer in about a year.



    Macs seem so amazing at adapting to anything. The reason I didn't format that shitty emachines drive before taking it out was because win xp was telling me last night that "the volume was still in use" and "cannot be unlocked." That was the first time I used that computer in a year and within one hour it reminded me why I hate it.
  • Reply 4 of 8
    sunilramansunilraman Posts: 8,133member
    dude eMachines is total bollocks welcome to the mac! you will notice a 100x increase in your computing happiness



    as others have advised for best results put that 80gb in a bus-powered or external powered (bus powered is more convenient but more expensive) firewire 400 enclosure



    you also want to get SuperDuper! for mac to make a bootable backup copy of your mac mini drive onto that external firewire drive. peace of mind like nothing eCrapMachines could ever have offered.
  • Reply 5 of 8
    eckingecking Posts: 1,588member
    An increase in my computing happiness? I already have



    Thanks a lot for the advice everybody I'm picking up the enclosure today.



    And your right eCrapMachines never offered me such a secure system!
  • Reply 6 of 8
    splinemodelsplinemodel Posts: 7,311member
    The one thing is that it may be cheaper to buy an enclosure with a drive in it than a bare enclosure. This is usually not the case, but I've seen it.
  • Reply 7 of 8
    jabohnjabohn Posts: 582member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Splinemodel

    The one thing is that it may be cheaper to buy an enclosure with a drive in it than a bare enclosure. This is usually not the case, but I've seen it.



    Check out eBay. I've found some enclosures for good prices.
  • Reply 8 of 8
    a_greera_greer Posts: 4,594member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by sunilraman

    dude eMachines is total bollocks



    I dont know about that, a 4 year old e-machines (or any ole' PC) with a little cleaning (compressed air to the fans and heatsync) and a copy of linuxcan be a faithfull little web/email box for kids, guest bedrooms, or a community center. one other use is a home media server.
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