Can I backup my Dell and my Mac on same drive? I have a Dell and a Mac and was wondering if anyone knows if you can back up files from both systems onto one hard drive like the Iomega Prestige? I could always buy 2 drives, but it would be nice to save an extra $80. Can I backup my Dell and my Mac on same drive? I have a Dell and a Mac and was wondering if anyone knows if you can back up files from both systems onto one hard drive like the Iomega Prestige? I... » Read More Can I backup my Dell and my Mac on same drive? I have a Dell and a Mac and was wondering if anyone knows if you can back up files from both systems onto one hard drive like the Iomega Prestige? I could always buy 2 drives, but it would be nice to save an extra $80. « Show Less
577667
Note that it depends on your OSX version. 10.4.11 (possibly 10.4.8, but I'm not sure) and later support NTFS - 10.3.9 supports HFS only.
577668
Yes, you could format it as a NTFS or FAT32. Mac (as well as Windows obviously) supports both.
577669
Hi Shiki, This is very helpful. Is it easy to partition the drive? I just ordered this so I don't have the drive yet, but when it comes I'd like to back up both my Mac and PC... Do you know where to find information on how to partition? Thank you!
577670
Everyone is wrong to a degree. OS X can READ NTFS, it can't write to it, at least not natively.FAT32 is not really suitable for backups, so I wouldn't do that.Your two options are to either partition off the drive to have an NTFS partition and an HFS+ partition (Windows and Mac respectively), or you could make it NTFS and then download MacFUSE and NTFS-3G (google it) which will give the Mac the ability to write to windows drives (Abiet, very very slowly).
577671
I, too, have a Mac and a Windows. I've ended up having separate hard drives for each. Most of my data--years and years of documents and images--are on my Windows computer. I got the Mac because I needed a laptop and didn't want to get Vista. My experience is that I can plug the Windows hard drive to the Mac and it will recognize and read just about everything. The PC, on the other hand, will not recognize the drive from the Mac (at best) or will have a blue-screen tantrum (at worst--so far).
158001
Some Dell hardware -- their backup cartridges -- use customized drives that don't work as regular drives and regular drives can't be substituted.However, we have had dozens of Dell computers at work, numerous models, and they routinely use standard WD or Seagate drives (either one even in a single shipment all of the same computer model). We've been able to clone them to other brands of drives, use them in non-Dell hardware, etc., with no problem.
1846007
I put it in a really old Dell 4600, with a IDE adapter. I had no problems what so ever. All you need to do is make sure you have lots of memory, and a fast processor, to handle the hard drive. I now use my drive as a secondary drive in my new computer.. You can get adapter from Amazon if you need one. If it is slow just upgrade you memory, that will help a lot.
611278
A.J., Thanks for your post, I have just done the same thing and it works a treat. My Mac picked up the Seagate drive on the desktop with no bother. Seems like the case and heat issues are letting Seagate down here.F
1953108
I believe they may have added Macintosh support since the time I bought mine, because on the Maxtor Site, under the Software Downloads section for the "Shared Storage Family", it lists some Macintosh software. That being said, I would heavily recommend using the included back-up software (which I find to be extremely unreliable) and provide your own back-up software.
2036121
If you have MacOS 10.4 or later on your laptops, yes you can. Windows 8 has the software to choose the files you wish to backup, not sure about apple.
308964
Me too! I'm not going to seriously consider purchasing anything computer related unless I see the manual that goes with it. Is it (i.e., Canvio) truly plug and play? Can you selectively choose individual files to back up? I'm not at all interested in wasting time and space backing up files that I really don't wish to back up. (I only wish to back up photographs.) Filtering through all the comments, while helpful writ large, takes a lot of time when looking for particular information. A manual please.
1024394
SATA or IDE can be connected and copied on to a temp location and transferred to Mac, I have 2 of my SATA hard drives one from desktop and the other from laptop Cheers!
135685
I am an idiot- specifically, how do you format this for a Mac? Also, is it fine to do this, or should I buy a specific hard drive already formated or designed for Macs?
1545681
I honestly do not know if you can. I believe its a yes, But...I I have never purchased a Apple Care for my Macs or protection for my PC's. If you are handy with maintaining your computers minimal knowledge you can fix things your self. I back up my stuff on external drives regularly you cant go wrong even if a major HD failure. I use "Super Duper" when I hit other snags I google the exact symptoms and always bail my self out every time.I only hit one minor snag in a couple of years and fixed it. The money I do save I use for other cool gadgets.
1326414
Just to throw in my 2 cents here, the Disk Utility reformat mentioned above in Andrew's post is spot-on. The drive so far as been great to use. However, I'm running Mac 10.5.6 and it was immediately recognized when I first plugged it in: it mounted and Time Machine asked if I wanted to use it for backups... I did the reformatting anyway as the apps on board are no use to a Mac owner. BTW, the $99 price was unbelievable! Fingers crossed on reliability, Yikesboy
787316
I do not know much about macs but if the mac has usb, this should pop up as an external usb hard drive (provided there is a hard drive in the device). If you have both Hard drives plugged in the device then you should be able to use your mac to drag and drop files from one hard drive to the other.
1343732
".......with Windows 8.1?"&gt;&gt;Don't see any reason why not. It's an electro-mechanical switch. It doesn't know what your running nor does it care. "Can same copy of Windows be loaded on each drive?"&gt;&gt;Anytime you install a Windows OS from a disk to a drive as a new install you are risking key number and activation issues. It reads the HDD serial number and MB type etc and thinks it's a new machine. Clone your existing HDD's. You shouldn't have any issues. I cloned my primary HDD to another HDD of the same brand and specs (bought them both at the same time) and I have had zero issues with activation etc when I boot to the clone. I don't like "back-ups". I do a full blown clone at least once a month or even less. So far, so good. The other 4 channels on the Orico are devoted to Linux OS's. Hope this helps.
1777603
I see no reason why not. just pop the new drive in the old ones place, they hook up the same way. However be warned, all of your data will be lost in this process. You should have a windows sticker somewhere on your computer case that has your product key, all you need to do is find a copy of the windows version that you have, install it and put in that product key. To find the drivers that you need just go to dells website and download them from there. If you ever get stuck during the process, google is your best friend.
111625
On my computers (Macbook Air and iMac) this loads as a drive and I can backup or do anything else I can do regularly with any other type of drive with this unit, up to its capacity of 128GB. Note, though, that my experience is under MacOSX and not Windows. My sense is that it should work the same way with Windows but i have not tested it. Good luck.
1555872
You should ALWAYS have redundancy, especially with these kinds of drives. Yeah, they are cheap, but your data isn't. Buy two and use one as a backup. I learned the hard way myself.
510903
I wish I could say I knew but I don't. That might be a good question to ask the company directly... I leave the MacBook plugged in as the default and working as our backup drive so I leave both on to backup in the background. Sorry I can't help more than that.