what external hardrive?

[philjohns]

My parents bought me an external hardrive for christmas infact, it was this one
I was really pleased as I new I was getting an imac and it said it was compatible, however none of the drivers were on the hardrive and it wont work!!! Therefore, my dad is returning it.

I need an external hardrive that is around 250GB for ABOUT £50 - £70 . . . and preferably compatible with mac and windows so I can literally swap from on to another whenever i want without losing any of my files.....

What external hardrive do you use and what would you suggest?

[LeadMagnet]

You shouldn't need drivers for windows OR mac for that to work.
However, if you want it to work on both systems, it is important that you format it using FAT32, NOT NTFS or whatever mac's proprietary format is called. Make sure your drive is properly formatted. It might not be faulty at all.

Also, it's worth pointing out that FAT32 is old and not great. There's a 2gb filesize limit with that fs.
It is your only choice though.

[philjohns]

hmmm...I may give it another go...however when it came up nothing happened and with a quick search on the net and a question to the guy in the shop it seemed I needed to format it for mac.....

[LeadMagnet]

If you want to use it with just a mac and not a pc, you format it for a mac with their file sytem using the mac software. If you want to use it with just a pc, you're better off using ntfs, but like i said, FAT32 is the only filesystem which is compatible with both.

I don't know how to format it to FAT32 on a mac (or if you even can), but in windows it's quite easy. You can right-click on the drive, select format, select FAT32 from the dropdown list, hit format. The other way to do it is to open up a command line (Start > run > "cmd") and type "format e: -fs fat32" (i think that's the write syntax), where e: is the drive letter of the external drive.

If it's not showing up in windows either, let me know and i'll walk you through how to get around that.

[prewe]

i have two of these

LaCie - Hard Drive, Design by F.A. Porsche - USB 2.0

had them for about four years now, still works perfect

[flick]

you could partition it and format the partitions, one for mac and one for windows, they wouldn't be able to read each other's partitions but it's better than using fat32 (you can format to fat32 on mac btw) but i reckon, lead magnet is right, it's old and not great.

[LeadMagnet]

There's no good reason to partition it for that reason.

[philjohns]

Ok, forget the windows bit - what would u suggest for a mac?

[LeadMagnet]

For just a mac? If you're only using it on a mac, use whatever the main mac format is. I don't own one. Can someone else fill him in pls?
Windows won't be able to read it though.

[philjohns]

i have two of these

LaCie - Hard Drive, Design by F.A. Porsche - USB 2.0

had them for about four years now, still works perfect

I didnt realise this post was there...my bad!!!

think I might be dipping into my pocket ;)

thanks veryone!!!