External hard drive format for use in both OS9 and OSX

I have never use OS9. A friend of mine wants to transfer their files from an OS9 computer to an OSX computer. Is there a hard drive format that can be used on both OS9 and OSX. It would be great to be able to transfer the files over on my Firewire hard drive.
Many thanks,
Beaglebrain.

Beaglebrain,
Should have added that you should check the size of your HD. OS9 won't recognise anything beyond about 190GB.
Michael

Similar Messages

  • Using IMOVIE '08 to import from DV camera to 'BUSLINK' external hard drive( formatted for MAC ) but no success and kept getting this message: The import was canceled. You may not have permission to write to /Volumes/BUSLINK/iMovie Events.localized. Thanx

    Using IMOVIE '08 to import from DV camera to 'BUSLINK' external hard drive( formatted for MAC ) but no success and kept getting this message: The import was canceled. You may not have permission to write to /Volumes/BUSLINK/iMovie Events.localized. Thanx in advance!

    I finally got a representative that was able to help me, she had me go to Get Info, by right clicking iMovie from the finder, and I had to click on Sharing & Permissions>Everyone>Read & Write

  • Best external hard drive format for use with mac and windows?

    This is more of an apple operating system combined with windows operating system question, but being that my OS will upgrade an fluctuate there is not option to choose in the operating system section.
    Anyways to the question(s)
    This whole prbolem came about when my computer started having issues, I want to back it up and whether I can continue to use my laptop or not I will still be owning an apple in the future. I went to buy a hard for back up and got told that it is not as easy as one would think to transfer files from mac OS to windows OS and vice versa. I have a mac, my boyfriend has a windows computer; we share files. Mostly I just copy his files, but once in a while I give him files too. I have read up and talked to people and only found one solution so far to format the external drive to fat 32 or exfat. I think only mac has the exfat option, but works well between both OSs, correct me if I am wrong.
    What is the difference between fat 32 and exfat?
    A user posted some good info about formatting. More specifically .Drives, partitions, formatting w/Mac's + PC's
    https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3044
    If I do not want to use fat32 or exfat is there a format type that works great for mac saving that I can still at least save files to that were originally on a windows computer? Such as I copy his files from his external drive to my computer and then save them to my external drive.
    Is there a better format for file sharing between mac and windows that does not set a 4GB limit?
    And a silly question, Can you dual format a hard drive?
    Note: This format is for an external hard drive.

    I still do not know which format would be the best. That is so that I can use it easily between mac OSX and windows. Is FAT32 the only true option? How limited is it? I heard it is limited to 4GB file size for windows and 32 GB for Mac. Are there other sources I have not found with more concrete information on the limitations of this format?
    I really do still need this information and I need to back up my drive before I can take the computer in for service.

  • I have a an external hard drive formatted for Windows, and I want to move those files to a new hard drive formatted for both Windows and OS. Is this possible?

    I just purchased a MB Air 13", as well as a Seagate Slim Backup Plus. I have an older external hard drive that I was using with a Dell laptop. I would like to get the files off of the older external hard drive, and onto the new Seagate drive. Is this possible? I'd also like to be able to add files going forward to the Seagate from either a PC or a Mac and be able to view/use them on the MB Air 13".
    Thanks in advance.

    You will have to format the Seagate external HDD to a format common to both Mac and PC such as ExFAT.  That should allow you to transfer files from the old HDD and still allow you to use with your MBA.
    Ciao.

  • How can I transfer files off an external hard drive formatted for windows?

    I just bought my first mac (yay!) and am trying to transfer my files off of my old pc.  The problem is that I stored all my personal files on an external hard drive, which is of course formatted for windows.  My mac will open it, but it is "read only."  I tried plugging it back into my pc and using the Migration Assistant to transfer my files over, but it was not detected (rest of the pc was).
    However, the second time I tried plugging it in to my pc, it told me it would need to be formatted first.  Obviously my mac has changed something on it, and now all my personal files are on a hard drive that is unusable by either my old pc or my new mac! 
    Any suggestions would be appreciated!  Heads up though, I am not especially computer literate, and my pc needs to stay intact as the husband needs it and some of the programs on it for school.  Also, I have a second external hard drive that is brand new with nothing on it, if that will come in handy.
    Thanks!

    Format the extra HDD to EXFAT as previously indicated.  There are two ways that can use to transferr the data. 
    1.  Connect both drives to the PC and the copy the files to the newly formatted (EXFAT) drive from the HDD with the data .  Then connect the EXFAT drive to the MBP and transfer the data to same.
    2.  Connect both drives to the MBP and open DISK UTILITY>RESTORE.  Drag the drive with the data on it to the 'Source' field.  Drag the EXFAT drive to the 'Destination' field.  Click on the 'Restore' butt is on.  After the transfer has been completed, close DISK UTILITY and place the data on the MBP where you want it.
    Ciao.

  • Formatting of External Hard Drive to be usable by both Windows and MBP?

    Hello, I would appreciate some advice regarding the formatting of hard drive here as I'm pretty new to the whole Apple/Macbook Pro scene!
    I am currently using a MBP (Retina) for about 2 months now.
    I was previously using a Windows PC and had a external hard drive to back up information from it. However, the EHD can only be read by my MacBook Pro and I can't seem to transfer any information into the hard drive. I've been reading up online and it seems that I would have to reformat the external hard drive so that it can be both used by Windows and Macbook.
    I have 2 questions here:
    If I were to reformat it to FAT32 or exFAT, will I have to first backup all the data on the hard drive first on another drive? Or will my data be safe amidst the formatting?
    Will this formatting of the hard drive allow it to be read by both Windows and PC?
    I would really appreciate some advice on this from anyone who has some clue about this! Thank you!!

    Timemachine
    http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427?viewlocale=en
    Ok if you think about backing up over timemachine, your harddrive should have at least 3 times that size you want to back up. Because of incremental Backups over timeperiods.
    So my suggestion, for exchange between Windows Mac --> exFat and for timemachine buy a new Harddrive that fits the specifications

  • External hard drive /storage for use with mini and XP (bootcamp)

    Never purchased an external hard drive (storage) before so not sure if this is possible.
    Basically I have an intel mini with 60gb hard drive, which I have now allocated 20 to xp via boot camp. I'm quickly using up the 20gb with a few games so I want to purchase an external storage device that will work with both osx and windows - is this possible?
    My mini hasnt 'seen' a few USB devices, can anyone recommend one which is compatible with the intel mini?
    would any external drive have to be partinioned as well?

    I still do not know which format would be the best. That is so that I can use it easily between mac OSX and windows. Is FAT32 the only true option? How limited is it? I heard it is limited to 4GB file size for windows and 32 GB for Mac. Are there other sources I have not found with more concrete information on the limitations of this format?
    I really do still need this information and I need to back up my drive before I can take the computer in for service.

  • Portable Hard drive formating for use with windows and mac operating system

    Just bought a verbatim sure fire 500g 800 firewire portable hard drive for my new macbook pro. I have not did bootcamp yet because I am deciding on wether to use Vista or the new windows 7 that will be coming out soon. The drive is already formated HFS+, how do I format the drive so I can write both windows and mac files to it. Help!!!

    how do I format the drive so I can write both windows and mac files to it.
    Either format it to MS-DOS from the DIsk Utility, or install a tool such as MacDrive into Windows and keep the drive in its current format, or install the NTFS-3G driver into Mac OS X and format the drive to NTFS in Windows.
    (45687)

  • Reading MP3 music files from an external hard drive formatted for PC

    I have 60 Gigabytes of MP3 files (my whole CD collection, mostly saved in high quality format) on a 120 GB external hard drive that was attached to my IBM Thinkpad. They are arranged in folders and subfolders, e.g. folder "Great pianists of the XXth Century" subfolder "Sviatoslav Richter" subfolder "Sviatoslav Richter CD1" files "(01) Bach English Suites 1", "(02) Bach English Suites 2".
    1) My Mac (OS X.4 - Tiger - or is that X.3?) recognizes the drive as a drive (its icon appears on the desktop), but not its contents. I was told by somebody that I'd need a differently formatted PC Hard Drive for the Mac to recognize the content, and then by somebody else that the titles would all then be truncated to 8 characters. Is there a way around this? Preferably I'd like to be able to read a HD that is formatted for PCs in the way that is now standard, directly from my Mac.
    2) Is there a way for iTunes - or some other music programme for the Mac - to play the MP3s as they are currently arranged, without having to reorder or rename them, or copying my whole CD collection onto a HD from scratch? (Getting 60 Gigs of MP3s from CDs is a task I'm not keen to repeat). If necessary, I could find a way to copy the current folders and files onto an external HD formatted for the Mac, but then that would hopefully be it.
    At present I'm having to use the Thinkpad with Windows Media Player to play back all this music over my Hi-Fi, but would like to free up the Thinkpad for other uses by my family, and would like to run all my music from the Mac I use for everything else.

    Thanks, Jason & Mike. This is how I resolved the problem. Turned out the disk with the data was in NTFS format. Neither my eMac nor my wife's Carbon iMac (prehistoric, in other words) was able to read it, on repeated attempts. In process I discovered (to my surprise) that the external hard drive attached to my eMac (a 320 Gig My Book) was formatted in FAT 32 format, and that the PC laptop (Thinkpad) read from it, and wrote to it, without any problem. (Is FAT 32 less than optimal for use with a pre-Intel Mac?). So I just copied the needed files from the NTFS disk to the FAT 32 disk, via the Thinkpad. When I reconnected the FAT 32 drive to the eMac, it turned out that it was easy [with some fiddling] to put the titles of the new music into the iTunes Library, without having to copy the music itself into iTunes. Making playlists does still seem to have to go manually. Sometimes the "New Playlist from Selection" option automatically gives a name (the original name) to the album from which the music came, sometimes it doesn't. Rationale not clear to me. Other problem: often the sequence is jumbled (this is after I added the whole collection of folders containing music to my iTunes Library in one fell swoop). Usually it was possible to correct this by copying track names for albums one album at a time from the external HD (in Columns view, selecting all the tracks in each folder simultaneously) directly into the playlist; the playlist name then always had to be copied or typed in separately. I don't know if I'm missing an easier route. Also, I see that I have version 4.7.1 of iTunes - I'll download a newer version! Don't know whether newer version will affect what I want to do in a positive sense.

  • External hard drive formatted for a PC

    In order to format my external hard drive to my imac, do I need to first copy all the files to the imac, and erase and reformat the hard drive. I just wanna make sure I'm doing this correctly, it scares me anytime I erase a hard drive. This is 4 years of wedding photo's that I can not afford to loose, but currently I can't put any further information on the hard drive, only remove it. Thank you in advance for any of your help.
    Mark

    NTFS can be read by Mac OS X if you install Macfuse or NTFS-Mac. Such hard drives though should not be used for booting, or backing up applications, or any non-platform agnostic files. You are limited to platform agnostic files as well with FAT32 too. MacDrive lets you format your hard drive for Macs while still use them on PCs.
    Message was edited by: a brody

  • External Hard Drive Formatted For Mac

    Hello,
    Can some one please point to a link to an external hard drive that comes formatted for Mac out of the box? My 90 year old mother-in-law needs a time machine backup and would freak out if I tried to guide her through Disk Utility to reformat the external drive she just bought from Radio Shack. So an out-of-the-box plug-n-play drive would work best for her.
    Does anyone know of any? I know LaCie is/was Mac focused, but I need to have a drive that is ABSOLUTELY Mac plug-n-play when it gets delivered to her house.
    Thanks!

    Do you Skype with her? Seems like you could just do a Skype call and share her screen so you can literally tell her to click this, click that. I've done exactly this with my mother across the Atlantic to solve a different problem. If she's capable of plugging the new drive into the Mac (which it sounds like you intend her to do anyway), I'd have to believe she'll be able to follow your instructions if you can tell her which options to click. Formatting a drive is relatively few clicks. And, I think this wouldn't be any harder than figuring out how to setup Time Machine...
    https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA10022/how-do-i-share-my-screen-in-skype-for-m ac-os-x

  • External hard drive question for using iTunes -- iPod

    Hello, I have my music stored on an external hard drive and want to keep it there (it's too much for my laptop). I can drag the music into itunes on my laptop and create playlists then get the music to my ipod during the same session.
    However, if I come back weeks later then try and access the music on my external hard drive via iTunes, it does not recognize the file location. It asks me to locate EVERY single song, which is ridiculous.
    Is there any way so that I can keep my music on my external hard drive and keep any songs and playlists intact so I don't have to start from scratch every time?
    The only thing I can think of is just putting a small amount of music on my laptop, which would work but defeat the goal of only storing it on the external hard drive.
    The other option I saw on one of the other posts was by consolidating the library on a new folder on the external hard drive, but I don't have enough free space on the external drive to make a duplicate copy of everything.
    Can anyone help me?
    Thanks!
    DK

    Make an alternate iTunes library and have it stored on the external drive.
    Now, every time BEFORE you start iTunes on your laptop, make sure the ex HD is plugged in and recognized by the laptop's Windows operating system.
    If you open iTunes before connecting the ex HD, guess what - you'll get a new blank library or corrupt library that can't find the files.
    The directions for making a different iTunes library are here
    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=iTunesWin/7.5/en/15502.html

  • All my external Hard Drives stopped showing up in both Finder and Disk Utility

    Hello there.
    i have this strange issue that occured just out of nowhere without me (knowingly) having contributed anything to it.
    yesterday i launched my iMac and my external firewire drive wasn't showing up in neither the finder nor on the desktop. i instantly thought about a hard drive crash, but soon tried other things to evaluate (or not) my guess.
    for instance, i unplugged the drive waited a few minutes before i plugged it in again. since this iomega drive is also equipped with a regular usb port i also switched cables and tried connecting it via the iMac usb sockets as well as via an usb hub without any luck. the drive still won't show up. so i launched the Disk Utility, to see if the drive needs some checking/repairing, but to my surprise it wasn't showing in Disk Utility either.
    thus far i only considered this to be an issue with only this particular external drive, but when i eventually switched on a 2nd external drive (this time an usb drive i use for Time Machine) that drive also refused to show up in either the Finder or the Disk Utility app.
    curious as i was, i then fired up a 3rd and 4th external drive and now had all 4 drives running at the same time. none of which were showing up, just as if they weren't even connected with the iMac.
    this strikes me as more than odd. i've heard about hard drive failures and crashes. they just occur over time. maybe and under some very strange coincidences it is possible that two external hard drives quit their jobs at the very same time, but seriously .... 4 of them?? i hardly think so.
    well, maybe it's the iMac's usb/firewire controller that's causing the trouble, i thought. but then again, my other connected devices (iPhone, iPad, Printer, Scanner, eyeTV) are functioning and get detected just fine as far as i can tell.
    i have no idea what's going on. i dismiss the idea of 4 external drives having crashed all at the same time just as much as i don't think that the iMac's usb/firewire controller has got any issues. re-formatting any of the 4 drives is out of the question and even if i'd consider such desperate measures, the Disk Utility wouldn't let me re-format anything anyhow, because the drives aren't listed there. i wish i could just use my Time Machine to resolve the issue but, as i mentioned earlier, i can't access the Time Machine because it also won't show up.
    please, i need an expert's help here. please, somebody bring back my 4 external drives so i can access them in finder again.
    any help will be much appreciated.
    thank you in advance..
    ..Otis

    Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:
    ☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
    ☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
    ☞ If you’re running Mac OS X 10.7 or later, open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the page that opens.
    Drag or copy — do not type — the following line into the Terminal window, then press return:
    diskutil list
    Post any lines of output that appear below what you entered — the text, please, not a screenshot.
    If any personal information appears in the output, edit before posting, but don’t remove the context.

  • External Hard Drive  Formatting  For Cross Platform File Sharing

    I have been doing some research on formatting options that can read/write both OSX and Win7. Someone recommended that I use UDF. I'm curious hearing from the apple community whether there are any downsides to choosing this formatting method. Are there any other better ones to use? Thanks

    Best I can tell, UDF is for DVDs and CDs, not HDDs.
    If you want a compatible format for Mac and Windows on a HDD, FAT 32 or ExFAT will fit the bill.  Fat32 does have a 4 GB file size limitation.  It is best to format these on a PC.
    You can use NTFS, but then you need third party software such as Paragon or Tuxere in order to write to the HDD.
    Ciao.

  • External hard drive formatted for Mac, but must access files from PC ASAP!

    Hi,
    I have a 20G Firefly Smartdisk that is formatted to work with my MacBook (in OSX). The drive contains the only copy of a final paper I have due in just a couple days, and unfortunately, it got left behind at a friend's house 9 hours away. My friend has a PC (running on Windows Vista) and when he plugs the drive into his computer, the computer recognizes the disk but is unable to access any of the files on it. It pops up with a marker detecting it as unreadable and asks if he wants to reformat (which he can't do because I need the files that are currently on the disk.) He says the file type is listed as RAW and it says used space - 0G free space - 0G. Does anyone know of a way to fix this and allow him to access the files? (I'm a recent convert to Mac, and I know when I plugged the disk into my Macbook when it was still formatted for Windows, I was at least able to see the files in read only format, but that does not appear to work in reverse!) Could he possibly have corrupted the disk by trying to access it from his computer?
    Please let me know - thanks so much!!

    Macdrive (per Templeton's post) should work. All I have to add is that the free/eval version has a 5 days timeout, so he should be able to use it to get your file -- I was experimenting with it just today for a GUID/GPT formatted USB disk. (OT, but related: XP+sp2 was able to recognize, read/write the FAT32 formatted partition on a GPT disk - preMacdrive - which came as a bit of a surprise).

Maybe you are looking for