itunes and external hard drives- interchangable between mac and pc?

RobB · 04-30-2006, 08:11 PM

I have a great G5 dual 1.8 tower with all my music in itunes, but I will be travelling for a time and will need to transfer my music to an external hard drive as I'll be travelling with a pc laptop. If I buy an external HD and upload my itunes contents (35GB) onto it, as well as photos and other stuff, will I be able to access the files on my pc laptop? Or will I need to get a mac laptop . . . are the contents encrypted somehow so as to be unaccessable?

Any advice would help .. .
RobB

macdude425 · 04-30-2006, 08:15 PM

Nope, everything should be fine. Make sure, however, that when you format your external harddrive to do it as FAT.

RobB · 04-30-2006, 08:23 PM

What is FAT?

jdhore1 · 04-30-2006, 09:21 PM

it's a Windows-based file format because Mac's can read FAT, but Windows can't read Mac's file format (HFS+)

Qiranworms · 04-30-2006, 09:58 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by jdhore1
it's a Windows-based file format because Mac's can read FAT, but Windows can't read Mac's file format (HFS+)

A minor correction, FAT actually predates Windows. It was made for MS-DOS as far as I know. Doesn't really matter for the topic at hand, however.

The General · 04-30-2006, 10:14 PM

i thought the dos was fat16 and windows 3.1 used fat32 ?

jdhore1 · 04-30-2006, 11:50 PM

no...Win95 OSR2 was the first Windows OS to use FAT32

shdwsclan · 05-01-2006, 01:00 AM

HFS+ is actually the best file system....
FAT Sucks and MS wont open NTFS as read/write

Get macDrive 6.1.........

Windows is the only operation system that can....
READ/WRITE HFS/HFS+ Paritions
READ/WRITE FAT/16/32 Partitions
READ/WRITE UNIX/Linux Partitions such as EXT2/3
READ/WRITE NTFS Partitions

Or, you could format the thinging in FAT32, but you would have to do it on a windows machine......macs like to screw up non mac os partitions....

DO NOT BELIEVE THE OTHER POST.
WINDOWS CAN READ AND WRITE HFS+/HFS Partitions successfully, and it does not disrupt any volume information....

macdude425 · 05-01-2006, 08:32 AM

Yeah, but it's about as easy as getting Windows to read Ext* partitions and all other Linux partitions, so I DO NOT recommend it.

The General · 05-01-2006, 10:42 AM

wait, what? Linux has read/write of all those filesystems and about 25 more

windows blows, and everyone knows it. the only reason people continue using it is because its what came on their dell and its also what most software is written for unfortunately

besides, who needs ntfs anyway?

the only fat32 formatted drive i have is my usb drive that i use to boot knoppix

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