Questinons about Mac before the big switch
Hello to all!
I am making the switch from lifetime Pc user to a s Mac user during this summer. Or as soon as the updated MBP and Leopard comes out.
A few things did come to mind as I was planning to switch to a Mac.
1. If I have a external HD (Western Digital) connected to the MBP via firewire 800, what partition would I have to use?
2. If I stored music, movies, pictures etc. on it would they show up in XP (have to use it for gameing sometimes) when running Bootcamp? What about the files I have stored in the OS X partition? Will they be accessable in XP Bootcamp and vice versa?
I'm also hoping that I could buy the MBP first then make sure that the external HD works under OS X and then connect the external HD to my old desktop PC via USB and move my files to a new home.
Oh and mind the english because I'm a Finn.
I am making the switch from lifetime Pc user to a s Mac user during this summer. Or as soon as the updated MBP and Leopard comes out.
A few things did come to mind as I was planning to switch to a Mac.
1. If I have a external HD (Western Digital) connected to the MBP via firewire 800, what partition would I have to use?
2. If I stored music, movies, pictures etc. on it would they show up in XP (have to use it for gameing sometimes) when running Bootcamp? What about the files I have stored in the OS X partition? Will they be accessable in XP Bootcamp and vice versa?
I'm also hoping that I could buy the MBP first then make sure that the external HD works under OS X and then connect the external HD to my old desktop PC via USB and move my files to a new home.
Oh and mind the english because I'm a Finn.
Comments
I am making the switch from lifetime Pc user to a s Mac user during this summer. Or as soon as the updated MBP and Leopard comes out.
Congratulations! You've made the right choice
1. If I have a external HD (Western Digital) connected to the MBP via firewire 800, what partition would I have to use?
Presumably you mean what format should you use? You have two choices: HFS+ (Apple's disk format) or FAT32, Microsoft's older disk format. NTFS is a newer Microsoft format that's closer to HFS+ in capabilities; unfortunately OS X can only read NTFS format, not write to it, so NTFS is off the table.
If you were just going to be using OS X, then you'd use HFS+. However, the requirement for Windows compatibility complicates things a little. HFS+ is superior to FAT32 (files are not limited to a maximum of 4 GB each, a wider range of characters can be used in filenames, fragmentation is significantly less, amongst others), but you need third-party, pay-for software (called MacDrive) for Windows to read it. FAT32 can be read and written by both OS X and Windows natively. If you can afford it, go with HFS+ and MacDrive.
2. If I stored music, movies, pictures etc. on it would they show up in XP (have to use it for gameing sometimes) when running Bootcamp? What about the files I have stored in the OS X partition? Will they be accessable in XP Bootcamp and vice versa?
Hopefully this has been answered by my response above.
I actually found about the MacDrive software a few days a go and it seems to be the solution to all of my problems.
I'll partition the external HD to a OS X HFS+ and via MacDrive I can access both the external and the internal (OS X side) HD on the windows side when needed.