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can i transport apple lossless between pc & mac?

I bought a seagate external usb drive for backing up the apple lossless files i am accumulating in my desktop. The manual cautions against using the external drive to share files between pc and mac operating systems. I'm hoping that this is less of a concern with itunes music files, since i would hate to have to rerip all my cds if i decide ultimately to implement a mac in my hi fi, after having used itunes for windows to rip. For that matter i would hope i could revert to pc should i regret the mac choice. Will the operating system i use to rip lock me in for future playback?
wkraft

Showing 2 responses by herman

herman
2,216 posts
 
How is the drive formatted?

As I understand it a PC can't read a drive formatted for Apple but an Apple can read some PC drives.

My local Mac dealer tells me that a Mac can read/write PC formatted drives but for the long term it will have problems.

Since I chose to use a Mini Mac I've formatted my drives for Apple.

I realize that is probably no help,
herman
2,216 posts
 
When I bought my Mac Mini I asked the geek at the Apple store about this and he told me to use Apple formatting. He said that even though the Mac would read/write fat32 that "eventually" it would start to have problems and I would lose data. I have no idea if that is correct.

Even if the drive is networked won't it have to be formatted in fat32 so both machines can use it?
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