Question about my external HD for my Surface RT.


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Hello!

I am currently using an iMac with an external HD, and I believe my external HD is formatted to the Mac OS X Journaled, or whatever it's called, and I know it won't be compatible with Windows RT, as far as I know. I am using it on Windows 8 right now, but I had to install MacDrive, in order to access my external HD.

I have a TON of photos, music, documents, and videos on there that I have kept for almost 6 years now. I want to be able to access that when I get my Surface on Friday.

What will be my best option with backing up my all my stuff on that HD, and reformatting it to where my Surface will be able to read it so I can drag/drop files to and from my surface/external hd.

Edit: I had read somewhere that if I format my external to FAT32, that it is able to be read by most systems. If this is true, would my best option be creating a temporary partition on my iMac, drag all of my files onto that temporary partition, format my external hard drive using Disk Utility, and then drag them all back to my hard drive???

I should've asked this earlier since I know the Surface is released on Friday and I want to make sure that my photos/music/videos and stuff on my external will be accessible when I get my Surface.

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I would just do it manually. I wouldn't risk a program doing that, it may screw up. I'd just move the stuff to the Mac, format the HDD with NTFS, install a write driver for NTFS on Macs, and then copy it back over the HDD. Why NTFS over FAT32? Because FAT32 has limitations, one of the biggest being it doesn't support file sizes over 4GBs, and it also has more file system errors than HFS+ and NTFS.

http://crosstown.coolestguyplanettech.com/os-x/44-how-to-write-to-a-ntfs-drive-from-os-x

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If you plan to access your files over the network and not by directly plugging in the external HD into the Surface, you could probably just navigate to the drive via a File Explorer window (if that's possible in Windows RT).

I'm not sure, but I would expect Windows RT to support hard drives formatted to NTFS, which I know Mac can read and write. I'd recommend NTFS over FAT32 as long as all the devices you plan on plugging the hard drive into can read and write to NTFS.

I preordered a Surface RT and hopefully will receive it Friday and hope that accessing files over the network work just as they do in Windows 8.

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I agree with him.

Copy everything to your iMac. Format the drive to NTFS and boom. One thing, install paragon or tuxera ntfs and youll be very happy. Full NTFS support via Mac and you now have a drive that you can use in windows, your surface, etc.

I have many externals, so my smallest/portable will be going to my RT this friday :D.

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I preordered a Surface RT and hopefully will receive it Friday and hope that accessing files over the network work just as they do in Windows 8.

If this screenshot is anything to go by...looks like it. This is Windows RT running on a Surface from the Anandtech review. Look in the sidebar list, under Computer, tons of networked devices. :)

Screenshot%20(34).png

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Thanks everyone. I am in the process of doing what someone said and just dragging them to my desktop. When I format in Disk Utility, I don't see an option for NTFS?? Do I need to use something else to format it to that?

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Are you trying to format your hard drive using a Windows computer? NTFS should be an option. You may have to go to a more advanced tool, like Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc).

(Thanks Sionic Ion for the screenshot and info!)

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I did it via OS X, but I didn't realize I had to download a plugin in order for Disk Utility to do that for me. So I went ahead and did that, but man, it's taking ages to put my music, videos, and other files back onto my external hard drive. It took maybe 2 hours tops to drag them from the desktop, but putting them back on the drive after formatting it to NTFS, it's taking hours. Is this normal?

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