External Hard drive

[Sarah Rabbit]

I want to copy and save files on my late 2007 MacBook to an external hard drive. The one I bought needs .hta - no good for the current OS. Any ideas where to get an 'old school' hard drive so I can save all my photos before updating the OS on the MacBook? Many thanks

 

[Solandri]

Not sure what you mean by .hta.

The vast majority of external drives sold are pre-formatted for Windows (NTFS). Macs can read NTFS, but can't write to it. To use it on the Mac, you need to reformat it (as HFS+, though OS X never calls it that). Normally you'll get a pop-up telling you this when you plug the drive in. But if you didn't, you can do it manually.
http://computers.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-format-your-macs-hard-drive--mac-53986

Just be sure you are formatting the external drive, not your Mac's internal system drive.

 

[Sarah Rabbit]

Thanks for your answer.

The one I bought was compatible with both mac and windows - thats really what I'm looking for. all the photos are stored as JPEGs and if I was to save them onto a disc I could view them on both a windows pc/laptop and a macbook. I just want a bigger storage solution than a CD/DVD.

The one I bought would do that if I have an up to date OS on the Mac. I plan to update but only when I know my photos are safely backed up.

 

[Solandri]

Nearly all drives are compatible with both Mac and Windows. They are just usually not compatible with both at the same time. Macs can read NTFS but not write to it, so they can read a Windows hard drive but not write to it. Windows can't read or write to HFS+, so it can't read nor write a Mac drive.

Both can read and write FAT and FAT32, but those formats don't support the large sizes of modern hard drives.

exFAT (requires OS X 10.6.5 or newer) does work, though from what I read you should format the drive as exFAT under Windows. After you've formatted the drive as exFAT, both your Windows and Mac computers (with 10.6.5 or newer) will be able to read and write to the drive.
http://lifehacker.com/5927185/use-the-exfat-file-system-and-never-format-your-external-drive-again

exFAT is optimized for flash drives, so won't be as quick on a HDD as HFS+ or NTFS, and will probably waste more space. But it's the simplest solution to what you want to do. The other options are to buy software for your Mac which will enable it to write to NTFS (Windows) disks. Tuxera and Paragon make such software, though I have used neither.
http://www.tuxera.com/products/tuxera-ntfs-for-mac/
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/