EXT HARD DRIVE QUESTION

[jacknjaspa]

Hi guys I'm new here so please excuse if this is a silly question.

I'm picking up a new Mac Mini today. I have iPhone & iPad but have always used windows for everything else so this is new (& exciting) to me.

I've been running Plex through an old Laptop (with movies saved to an a External HD) through my Plasma but the laptop has died, so thats why I'm buying the Mac Mini.

My question is will the Mac Mini read my Ext HD or will it have to be reformatted? (its is NTFS currenlty, which is what it was when I purchased it)

If I have to reformat it will erase all all files on their so how do I save the files & then get them back on their once reformatted?

Any help will be much appreciated

[marv777]

[Bandit Bill]

Your Mac will read the hard drive. Copy the files to the internal drive, reformat the drive for OS X Extended Journaled, then copy the files back.

It's that simple assuming the mini has enough space.

[Cypher]

I agree with Bill but would additionally add that if you still want to use the drive with windows machines, you may want to choose FAT format which will allow both systems to natively read and write to the drive. You will be limited to individual file sizes of under 4GB with FAT32 though.

Word of warning though, don't try and write any files to the NTFS drive, it will probably fail but it could corrupt your drive.

You also have another option of leaving it as NTFS and downloading a Mac application to support NTFS files on the Mac. I've never used any of these and they tend to be pay solutions as well, I'm not a fan of them as you need this additional layer of software to use the drive, which could make it difficult to get to your files if you have problems in any way.

I run a similar setup to what your going to be doing. I have my media on several external drives, including a Drobo but its mostly now on a couple of NAS drives nowadays. I have Plex running on all my apple machines including my iPad and an Apple TV. Most of my external drives are OS X Extended Journaled, but I do have a couple of drives which I have formatted FAT so they can easily be used on Windows machines.
_________________
Phil

Mac Mini 2.53GHz - iMac 2.0Ghz - Macbook Pro 2.4GHz - iPad 1 32GB 3G
6TB Netgear Ready NAS NV+ - 6TB Drobo S

[billb]

Their may not be any need to reformat your HD.
You can try Tuxera NTFS or NTFS for Mac.

And forget about Pargon I would try THIS first.
If the "THIS" link above is bad try the long version of the link:
http://i.vishalagarwal.com/post/30387627819/ntfs-write-on-lion-or-mountain-lion

Make sure you let us know what you do
and how well it works out. THANKS!!!

And don't forget if you simply attach your
External Hard Drive to your Router their
shouldn't be any need to reformat that
Hard Drive or even install any software.
Your Mac should see whats on it and play
your files.
_________________
2011 Mac mini 2.7 GHz i7 with
16GB RAM, Samsung 512GB SSD
MacBook AIR 11 Inch
Mac mini, Model 1.1, 2.33 GHz C2D Proc
20" iMac G4 PPC