Ok I'm a total computer retard! I have a 500GB external HD that I used to back up my new MacBook Pro and for backing up my music sessions etc. Well I want to back up my music and photos from my DELL PC but when I plug in my HD to my PC through my USB port, I can't find it anywhere. I know it's there cause when I use the icon to "safely remove hardware" it lists it as one of the devices to eject but I don't know where to look for it to save something on to. I read on another thread and some one said to go to control panel then to Administrative then to disk management and assign a number to my hard drive. Well is that supposed to work with an external HD too? Because I tried assigning a letter to it but it only gives me the Delete or Help option. I'm not sure exactly what operations systems I'm using on my PC....all I know is it's Windows XP. Is there a way to fix this without having to reinstall something or do something that computer savvy people are good at? I Just want to put my music and photos on my darned HD! HELP!!!!
You presumably formatted the hard drive using the Mac? It may be in a format that windows can't read.
eeks...I'm not sure if I did....I mean I plugged it in to my Mac and then had to go through a set up then partitioned it later into 2 separate sections. Is there a way to format it so my PC will read it?
Windows (or windows XP anyway) will only read NTFS and FAT32 (it'll read FAT as well,but trust me you don't want that). NTFS ideally, but FAT32 is probably what you'll have to use. Note that FAT32 can't store/read individual files larger than 4GB.
ok cool, thanks for replying....but what does that mean for me? What do I have to do? I wish I was better with computers but I'm a big computer loser.
Assuming you still have all the data on your Macbook, wipe the external drive clean and reformat it using your windows PC using the FAT32 file system. That way both your PC and Mac will be able to read and write to it. Some research tells me NTFS isn't going to work on a Mac, so FAT32 it is.
Personally i would download a diagnostic disc for the make of your External hard drive and boot your pc to the disc.I would then re format the disc in NTFS as FAT32 will not take large files. I would then make sure your windows has the updated usb driver to reconize the drive and then plug your external drive in. My opinion your windows xp may need a upated driver to reconize your external hard drive.
