Usb HD drive for a Mac

[edgars70]

Hi,

Sorry, but I know nothing about Macs and my father-in-law wants a usb HD drive. I know that his mac has usb ports, but I do not know which version of mac OS he is using.

Will any usb HD drive work? Will it need to be formatted?

Any recommendations? Looking for 250-320Gb.

Thanks

[abaxas]

FAT32 formatted will be fine. NTFS is a no no.

I think most drives are formatted FAT32, but if not you can always reformat with disk utility.

Buy the one you want! And ask for help if you need it

[edgars70]

Thanks for your help. I might buy the white LG one from scan. It looks mac-esque

http://www.scan.co.uk/product.aspx?ProductId=30264

[Dogers]

There's actually a big group test in this months PCPro, although they're testing them formatted as NTFS which skews the results a little.

If you're not interested in sharing the drive with a Windows machine, you might want to reformat it to HFS+ when you get it.

[Gordy]

You can format the drive with NTFS, just install the google macfuse tool and NTFS-3G for full read write access on a NTFS drive.

[nightkhaos]

You can format the drive with NTFS, just install the google macfuse tool and NTFS-3G for full read write access on a NTFS drive.

++ I have no problems with NTFS-3G and write access to NTFS drives however whatever you do, do not use NTFS-3G on a boot-volume. It can play havoc with the Windows system files. But for media storage/backup NTFS-3G is fine.

[abaxas]

Just had a thought!!

Why not check you father's mac for firefire ports. If it does, it's best to get a dual usb/firewire drive.

Yes, it may be more expensive. But it'll be faster using firefire and the mac can boot/install OSX onto it. Hence better if something goes wrong.

[Dogers]

You can format the drive with NTFS, just install the google macfuse tool and NTFS-3G for full read write access on a NTFS drive.

True, you can do that, but under Linux with FUSE, NTFS access is noticeably slow. It's fine for emergency access, but I couldn't recommend it for primary use. Don't know if the Mac version is faster, not used it that much on the missus' MacBook!

[Gordy]

True, you can do that, but under Linux with FUSE, NTFS access is noticeably slow. It's fine for emergency access, but I couldn't recommend it for primary use. Don't know if the Mac version is faster, not used it that much on the missus' MacBook!

The mac version used to be painfully slow, but it's improved loads recently. I would make sure you are using the latest version as that may improve things for you.