swapping XP files with Mac

[Guest]

I have a Seagate external hard drive. I backed up my PC on the external
drive. The drive came factory set for FAT32 format. I was able to copy
some files from the E drive to the Mac. On later attempts the E drive said
it needed to be re-formatted. This same message came up on both the PC and
MAC. I suspect the Mac corrupted the E drive. I reformatted the external
drive but obviously lost and recopied all the files from the PC. So....what
is the best format to use on the E drive to swap files but not corrupt the E
drive. NTSF file might work since I do not need to write from the Mac, just
copy. Any help?

 

[GreenieLeBrun]

I have a Seagate external hard drive. I backed up my PC on the
external drive. The drive came factory set for FAT32 format. I was
able to copy some files from the E drive to the Mac. On later
attempts the E drive said it needed to be re-formatted. This same
message came up on both the PC and MAC. I suspect the Mac corrupted
the E drive. I reformatted the external drive but obviously lost and
recopied all the files from the PC. So....what is the best format to
use on the E drive to swap files but not corrupt the E drive. NTSF
file might work since I do not need to write from the Mac, just copy.
Any help?

The Mac will not see the NTFS drive so you are stuck with FAT32. If you are
using the external drive as a backup for your PC then do just that , use a
USB thumb drive to swap files to the Mac.

 

[Sharon F]

I have a Seagate external hard drive. I backed up my PC on the external
drive. The drive came factory set for FAT32 format. I was able to copy
some files from the E drive to the Mac. On later attempts the E drive said
it needed to be re-formatted. This same message came up on both the PC and
MAC. I suspect the Mac corrupted the E drive. I reformatted the external
drive but obviously lost and recopied all the files from the PC. So....what
is the best format to use on the E drive to swap files but not corrupt the E
drive. NTSF file might work since I do not need to write from the Mac, just
copy. Any help?

NTFS will work is you just want to copy files from it to the Mac. Mac OSX
is perfectly capable of reading FAT32 or NTFS on drives used
interchangeably with Windows machines.

I'm not sure why you had the problem with the FAT32 drive. I've used both
FAT32 and NTFS externals with my MacBook Pro and have not seen that happen.