iMac and External HDD question

[GibMcFragger]

Hi everyone. I have owned and used iOS products for years, but I have always run (and hacked) Windows based PCs.

I look to be receiving a juicy XMAS bonus from work and it looks like I should be able to afford the 27" iMac I have been drooling over for months (3.4GHz i7). It's time to kick PC to the curb.

My question is this. I have all my valuable files stored on an external USB hard drive, which is formatted in NTFS for my windows pc. Will the iMac read/write to it? All my music, movies, etc are on the external drive and nowhere else.

Thanks!


Beamed over the interwebz from my iPhone 4S using Siri.

 

[imwjl]

Hi everyone. I have owned and used iOS products for years, but I have always run (and hacked) Windows based PCs.

I look to be receiving a juicy XMAS bonus from work and it looks like I should be able to afford the 27" iMac I have been drooling over for months (3.4GHz i7). It's time to kick PC to the curb.

My question is this. I have all my valuable files stored on an external USB hard drive, which is formatted in NTFS for my windows pc. Will the iMac read/write to it? All my music, movies, etc are on the external drive and nowhere else.

Thanks!


Beamed over the interwebz from my iPhone 4S using Siri.

You shouldn't have a problem and you can run also run a Windows virtual machine within your host OS (the Mac). Take that PC P2V before you put it on the curb for the best guarantee of reading and operating anything that has been important to you.

If these files are valuable you'll have them mirrored on more than one drive as well as have them on and off site. Backing up is not just for truck drivers, and it happens too often when my users or somebody who calls us doesn't have the backup they think they have.

Good luck.

 

[GibMcFragger]

Yea. From all the info I have read, OSX will read it, but not write to it. That's fine, I can copy it all off, reformat the drive for OSX, and then copy it all back.

HAHA This IS my backup drive. It's all on the PC also, which I am going to low level format a couple times before I get rid of it.

Thanks!