From PC + old external drive to Mac + new external drive -- how to do it right?

Hi folks,

I could use some guidance in this one part of my household's switch from PC to Mac. I need to make sure I have all the right steps and in order so I do it right Here's the scenario: Hubby and I both always had PCs, now we both have mac laptops. (His: used white macbook, mine: new macbook air). We each have external drives that we use with our PCs, with some files stored in the PC internal drive, and some files (including 100-120GB of iTunes content for each of us -- why we have the external drives in the first place) on the external drive. The existing hard drives are older than dirt, big as bricks, and well into the danger zone to be replaced. I have acquired 2 shiny, tiny, new external hard drives, and I need to get from where I'm at to the situation where we are all-mac, all-the-time: each of us with our own mac laptops, and our own, nice, new external hard drives with all our files on them. One extra detail: I had already started copying over stuff from my aging external hard drive to one of the new ones before we both got new macs.

So here's what I've got:
1) HerPC using oldHDD-1
2) HisPC using oldHDD-2
3) oldHDD-1
4) oldHDD-2
5) newHDD-1 with some data on it, previously used only with HerPC (Verbatim Store'n'go)
6) NewHDD-2, fresh out of the box (Seagate Backup Plus)
7) HisMac
8) HerMac

Here's what I *think* I should do:

Step #1: Connect NewHDD-2 (Seagate) to either Mac, and format for Mac -- Mac OS Extended (journaled)??

Step #2: Copy everything I need from HerPC hard drive and oldHDD-1 onto newHDD-1 (Verbatim)

Step #3: Connect newHDD-1 (Verbatim) and NewHDD-2 (Seagate, now formatted for Mac) to HerMac, and copy all the files from newHDD-1 to newHDD-2.

Step #4: Once all the data's been copied, reformat NewHDD-1 (Verbatim) for Mac.

Step #5: Copy everything needed from HisPC onto oldHDD-2

Step #4: Connect oldHDD-2 and newHDD-1 (now formatted for Mac) to HisMac and copy all the files from oldHDD-2 onto newHDD-1



So, what do you all think? Does this sound right? Sorry if it's hard to follow but I did my best to explain. Basically, the PC won't be able to write to the external drive once it's been formatted for Mac, right? So I'll have to be able to use the Mac to transfer data from a PC-formatted HD it can read, to a new Mac-formatted HD it can write to.

I would really appreciate any guidance people could give me. I would hate to screw this up!

 

You can format a drive in fat 32 or exfat that will be readable on both the windows pc and the macs.

 

Sorry for the delayed reply...

Is there any reason not to use fat32 for the format? For example, I thought I read somewhere that in one format (can't remember which) a Mac won't be able to save large files.

Our old PCs are about to be retired, so we don't necessarily need the external drives to be readable by both, once the initial switchover of all our data to the Macs is accomplished.

Appreciate your feedback!

 

With the Fat32 format, by design you can't save any file over 4 GB in size whether on the Mac or PC.

I had formatted my external hard drive to Fat32 and then had downloaded some Linux distro ISOs and tried to transfer them to the external drive until I could burn them to DVD — no go! I had to reformat my external drive to NTFS and then transfer the ISOs.

 

I thought that was the case.

Thanks for the replies. I got it figured out now. Someone else i talked to pointed out that one of the drives i have is big enough to hold everything while i transition, so i'm all set.