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I'm thinking about switching from a PC to a Mac. Question: Will two external hard drives (Lacie and WD) on which I have stored my music work with a Mac?
Follow Ups:
There are third party drivers that will allow your Mac to access your NTFS drives seamlessly. The name brands are NTFS-3G (aka Tuxera) and Paragon. They cost around $20 - $30 as I recall. Once installed they are totally transparent to the user. But I agree with Abe and others: If you are going to switch to Mac, find a way to temporarily relocate your files and reformat your drives to OSX Extended.
. . . in theory, practice and theory are the same; in practice, they are different . . .
Nothing is easy! I need to do more research. The last thing I want to do is re-rip 544 GB of music and backup on two new drives.
You should not need to re-rip. Worst case scenario is you would need to move music libraries over to new drives. Talk to people who do "PC to Mac data migration" and I bet they'll have an answer for you that will make you feel a whole lot better.
Cheers,
Presto
"Nothing is easy! I need to do more research. The last thing I want to do is re-rip 544 GB of music and backup on two new drives."
Answers would come easier if you gave more detail on exactly what you are trying to accomplish.
Why do you think you need to 're-rip'? You probably don't need to.
What format did you rip your current music files to? MP3, FLAC, WAV, AIFF, AAC, Apple Lossless, etc?
You never told us if your drives are formatted FAT or NTFS. And you never told us if you wish to make the leap and 'switch' to Mac or do you want to share your disks between a Mac and a PC?
Knowing more detail will allow others to offer more focused suggestions instead of having to guess at what you are trying to accomplish.
Mac can read/write to a drive formatted as FAT but as bwb pointed out, it can only read NTFS. How is your drive presently formatted?
If the drive is formatted as FAT, it will simply work with the Mac and PC. If it is formatted NTFS, the Mac will be able to play the music files from it but you won't be able to rip new content to it.
If you plan to truly switch to Mac, the preferred file system for the drives will be "Mac OS X Extended".
If you have 544GB of content, all you need is a 640GB drive (or maybe go for 1TB). Format the new drive as "Mac OS Extended" and simply copy your music files over to the new drive (drag and drop the folders to the new drive). OR.... if you don't know how to use the Mac's Disk Utility to format a new drive, buy one that is already "Mac Compatible" then drag and drop your content to it.
Good luck.
Thanks, Abe.
My SO wants to dump the PC and go with a Mac.
Currently, both external drives (1Tb and 2TB) are NTFS.
Ideally, I would like to simply connect my external drives to a new Mac and operate as I do with the PC - playing, archiving new vinyl transfers and adding new CDs as I acquire them. Currently, everything is stored as Apple lossless.
BUT ... it sounds like if I move to a Mac I'll need to dump the NTFS drive contents to new FAT drives ... especially if I want all my music collection and new content all in one place and on one backup, right?
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after you get your new MAC set up get a couple of 2 TB drives and make a concatenated array so you'll have 4TB drive. You need more backups anyway and drives are cheap. Go to Mac help to see how to make the array.
in iTunes choose the 4TB drive as your iTunes media folder in advanced preferences
check the option to copy files to the media folder when adding to iTunes selected and also have the box checked to keep it organized
drag and drop the NTFS drives into the new iTunes
As iTunes builds your library files it will copy everything to the new 4TB drive.
It will take a very long time ( a day or 2 for 3TB) but when it is done all of the files will be on your new drives and you can save the old ones as backup.
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I thought he mentioned that he had only 544GB of content. I'm not sure why he would need two new 2TB drives concatenated to hold a half TB of his stuff.
In fact, I don't know why he needs his current 1TB and 2TB drives for only 544GB.
As best I can tell, all he needs is some temporary disk space to move his content from his existing drives. He could potentially use the internal disk on his new Mac. Then format those existing external drives "Mac OS Extended" and move his files back onto them.
Whatever he needs to do, it's not rocket science!
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I just saw the 1TB and 2TB and missed the 544GB part
agreed, no need got a 4TB array
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On the other hand, maybe he has other items on those two external disks besides his 544GB of music. I'm not sure because the OP has not been clear on his setup and his specific goals.
Not clear? Jeez.
But about that 544GB you mentioned... Is that the total of your music and does it reside on one 1TB drive or some on the 2TB drive as well. What I am not understanding is why you have a 1TB drive and a 2TB drive if all you have is 544GB of music content.
I'm not trying nit pick, but knowing the specifics is important for knowing how you might proceed and what you might need.
If I assume that all you have is 544GB that you are concerned with, then I would tell you to put it on the 1TB drive, reformat your 2TB drive, copy the 544GB over to the 2TB drive, now reformat the 1TB drive.... or whatever.
So it's still not clear to me but if you're satisfied with the answers you've received so far, I'll butt out. ;-)
If you plan to dump the PC completely and go Mac all the way, ideally you will want your external drives formatted as "Mac OS Extended". This is easy to do with the Mac's Disk Utility program.
However, you will need a place to temporarily move your existing files because when you repartition / reformat your external drives, you will lose all of your data.
Depending on how much data you have on the external drives, you might be able to copy your files and folders over to the INTERNAL drive on your new Mac. Once they are copied to the Mac, now go ahead and reformat / repartition the external drives using the Mac's Disk Utility program. Once that is done, you can copy or move your files from the Mac back over to your external drives.
Using Disk Utility is fairly simple so if you need help, someone here can jump in when you're ready.
Also note that the latest Mac OS Mountain Lion operating system will be out later this summer. There's also a decent chance that some of the Macs may also be updated. If you're not in a hurry, it might be worth waiting until "Mountain Lion" is out and pre-installed on the Macs before you buy. Just a thought.
If they are formatted FAT (16 or 32) yes.
If formatted NTFS maybe?
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it isn't a maybe
Mac can read an NTFS drive but it can't write to one
formated FAT 32 or Exfat it can read and write, but unlikely they are formatted that way.
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Thanks for your reply. I will check to see how they are formatted.
If you plan to truly 'switch' from Mac to PC, you should consider backing up your files then reformatting your disk using the "Mac OS Extended" file system. Then copy your files back over to the newly formatted disk. You can use the Mac's Disk Utility program to partition and format your disk.
If you plan to share your disk going back and forth between the PC and Mac, you will want the disk formatted as "FAT" as Macs and PCs can deal with the old archaic "FAT" file system. You can also partition and format "FAT" with the Mac's Disk Utility.
Mac cannot natively mount a NTFS file system without third party software so I wouldn't recommend using it.
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Mac can mount and read an NTFS drive, it can't write to one
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