I have a Windows PC. My friend has a Mac. We’re gonna trade hard drives (his is larger, and I’m compensating him). What do we need to do to make this transisition painless? Format first and then give to each other?
Wow. Does this friend have any other larger hard drives he wants to be compensated for?
In any case, it shouldn’t be a problem. Don’t worry about formatting. His Mac drive won’t work on your PC, so you’ll format it anyway. You PC drive on his Mac, which readable (if not NTFS), doesn’t contain a valid Mac OS, so won’t boot. Mac OS also won’t install on FAT/FAT32, so he’ll have to format it to install his OS.
If he already has another drive that boots Mac OS X, and his new drive is FAT/FAT32, and you have any privacy concerns, then I’d format it. If you’re really paranoid, use Norton or whatnot to shred/nuke/whatever to it.
He’ll probably format it anyway, since FAT/FAT32 is limited in a heck of a lot of ways.
yup. I’ve done this both ways. ya basically format the drive in the new computer. Now, if a drive was a primary in one machine and is becoming a secondary, or vice versa, then you’ll need to figure out if jumpers need mucking with. But there’s usually a convenient picture right next to the jumpers.
And of course if it’s becoming a primary HD, you’ll need to have a boot disk handy. But those are both the same issue you’d hit switching drives between boxes of the same ilk.