Mac Computers
 

I am about to replace my widows PC with a Mac computer. I want to buy a free standing hard drive to transfer my files and then use it for backup. Can anyone recommend a good product around 200 GB. Thank you.
John.

John,

I recently bought a Freecom model from svp. It seems to do the job fine. I'm not sure if the bundled automatic data backup software is available for a mac, but I dare say this is a common problem with all the drives out there.

There's nothing to stop you manually dragging and dropping the files you wish to copy.

http://svp.co.uk/products-solo.php?pid=1465

Regards,

Duncan

If you can keep the PC going until you have the mac, it should be quite easy to network them together (but needs ethernet cable or airport) so the new drive can be mac formatted from the start. Or take it into the dealer you are buying the mac from. Suggest you get a slightly bigger drive, my 160GB gets too near full for comfort (LaCie, usually reliable with mac)

Mac system (OS 10.x) automatically has all the software you need for such operations.

My sincere apology to everyone who may not agree with my way of thinking but in 2 words: "My Condolences". :D

Don't the Mac and PC have different filing systems? Though I suppose Mac might have drivers to support PC filing systems, in which case you could use the drive on both computers without reformatting.

Anyway, I bought a Lacie 250 GB drive for £80 from Watford Electronics. They also use them at work, and they seem to work very well indeed.

Thank you Duncan, I've followed the link and it looks fine to me.

John

Thank you Daedal, I will do that but I still want a free standing drive for backups. It should be faster than DVDs. I do have airport and ethernet as part of the package.

John.

Hello Sasan, I don't have much choice the computer and r2400 print were a surprise fathers day present from my daughter.

John

Hello Leif, being a bit of a dummy where computers are concerned I don't really follow you. Will my Windows PC files copy to a Mac formated hard drive. If so, I can see my way forward.

Regards,

John.

The mac will read all PC files like .jpg .doc .xls, but not programmes (.exe). This is irrespective of whether they are on another networked computer or an external hard-drive. (or a 20 year old floppy, if you buy a floppy drive). Depending on the software bundled you may need to get MacLinkPlus to translate files from PC only programs to mac equivalent. If you have any trouble, PM me I have 20 years mac experience; there is also the apple on-line knowledge base and it is quite difficult to find any problem that cannot be solved there; don't worry its far easier than swapping other way round. There are also PC emulation progs, but they are expensive and slow. :) :)

On reflection, I think you are making a false assumption if you think you need the external drive to transfer your existing files. (a) it is not necessary as the mac will copy across all or anything there is on the PC by networking the 2 together; easy as the mac software detects what there is at the other end of the cable or the airport; at worst you may have to put everything into 1 folder on the PC and assign a pass-code to it (b) for long term back-up it will be better to have the external HD formatted for mac (or rather just not formatted for PC). This is because the mac operating system includes a very powerful database in its structure, so all files are stored with a wealth of information that enables you to find them later if you (or nowadays the computer itself) has been less than intelligent as to where they should be stored.

But the HD can be bought shortly after the box, not needed concurrently as you still have the PC as back-up. 2 of us now are recommending LaCie as reliable. If you go for a cheapo, there are a certain number of know failures around and the suppliers rely on you having a guarantee (=insurance policy) to get a replacement. Also when a really mac compatible drive is about to fail (ie has a fault in 1 of several billion sectors), the mac OS locks you out of messing things things up any further. At that stage, copying to a working mac is still possible by, as it were, sucking from the mac end using the UNIX machine system. That also applies to the internal drive.

Thank you Daedal for all that information. I feel much easier in my mind now. If I have any problems I will contact you again providing you don't mind.

Best wishes,

John.

Well, my Mac is up and running and after some initial frustration I love it.
I was a bit worried when Adobe CS2 for Mac could not recognize my 5D, but a download from the web soon fixed that.

My sincere thanks to all of you who offered advice. I must give a special thanks to Daedal who helped me enormously, via private messages, during the initial stages. He was so patient in his exhaustive answers.

John.

I've got a PC running XP Professional SP2 and downstairs mother has an iMac running OS X 10.2. We share the internet through a router.

Mother uses her Mac for video editing and I use mine for web design and graphics so when she needs pictures edited we send them over the network as she doesn't have Photoshop (or a scanner since she upgraded from OS 9.2)

I'd never set up a connection between a Mac and Windows before and within a couple minutes looking for instructions on how to do it, it was done.

I've got a folder on my computer that she can access but I can't see any of her files. All she does is copy the files into my folder, I edit them and save them to the same folder. She then copies them back out onto her Mac.

I can't remember what make or model the router is without going downstairs but I believe any will do.

I think you will find that on mac you need to set yourself up with a username & password, then you will be able to access all stuff allowed to users other than admin-user, but use help in menu bar of mac and it will guide you through. I also recommend upgrade to OS 10.3.9 (but no further) as there are a few progs that won't run on 10.2 and the self-heal is fully automated whereas 10.2 performs it only on shut-down+re-start. Mine is a powerbook which normally never gets shut down.

(When I go to my daughter's and since Angus gave me an access folder and password to his PC system, my mac automatically picks up his wireless network, which is great for me as I can use my own bookmarks, web-mail etc)