I have an external hard drive that I have been using on a Mac. I recently plugged it in to my PC, however, Windows XP says that I must convert the disk to a dynamic volume so that it can be recognized and given a drive letter. If I allow Windows to do this, will I lose the data that was previously put on there using the Mac?
2006-09-17 09:52:25 · 4 answers · asked by Joe K 6 in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Other - Hardware
Depending on how your external drive is formatted, you should be able to share them without problems.
If it is formatted using FAT16, or FAT32 in Windows, you should be able to read and write to the drive on both Windows and Mac.
If it is formatted with NTFS, you will be able to read and write on Windows, but only read it on Mac.
If it is formatted for Mac (HFS or HFS+) you will need a program such as MacDrive to read/write to it in Windows. http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive6/
It should be noted that if you convert it to a dynamic volume in Windows, you will most likely lose the data on it.
2006-09-17 10:55:28 · answer #1 · answered by Brian C 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
TransMac for Windows can open Mac format drives from a PC.
2013-09-29 11:10:36 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Macintosh and Windows use incompatible files systems they always have and likely always will.
Your Windows computer cannot use the usb drive in its current state formatted to the Macintosh operating system File structure so Windows wants to convert the drive to the Windows System file structure, so that it can use the drive. If you allow windows to format the drive even if your Macintosh files survive they are not compatible with your windows operating system so what windows will do is just erase and reformat the hard drive you are talking about.
2006-09-17 17:07:49 · answer #3 · answered by demonicunicorn 4 · 0⤊ 2⤋
um i think you may be able to if you also format the XP off ur computer
2006-09-17 16:56:03 · answer #4 · answered by Abby E 1 · 0⤊ 2⤋