Hi, I just recently purchased a 320 GB Seagate FreeAgent Go External Drive. I would have wanted to purchase the Go drive for Mac but i couldn't find it here. Anyway, I bought this drive to back up my files in my good ol' ibook g4, running on Tiger before i upgrade to Leopard. I have been using this ibook for a good 5 years now but i have absolutely no clue where to begin when it comes to the initialization as this is my first time to buy an external HD. I have been to the online support site of seagate but it is not very helpful. The Seagate drive shows up on my screen and is recognized by my ibook no problem. It runs on a Windows NTFS format so the S.M.A.R.T status naturally reads-- Not supported. So the my questions are a) what is the first thing i do? Do i format it? Or format then partition it, etc? I have no idea what is required to do. I have read that some recommend partitioning while some dont and that it's also different if you will be backing up software files etc etc. In my case, will be backing up mostly pictures and music and some ms office files, a few vids and mac games. And then, after all this is done, b) will i be able to pull out some files (music, pics, ms office files) to use in my PC based laptop that i use at work or will this corrupt my drive? I would really appreciate it if you guys could help me out. I'm totally confused. Thanks in advance!
Re: Preparations for backing up ibook g4 files into a Seagate Freeagent Go External H Plan A First you should do is connect your HD to your windows laptop, download a discWizard here http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/discwizard Then install this to your laptop, then after run the discwizard then your HD will be detected then maybe it will advice you to format, and you can also partition it. if you format it make sure that you use NTFS format. And after everything is done jump to your ibook, download Paragon NTFS or MacFuse, this is for the os to recognize the NTFS format. then intall, then after now you can back up your files pictures , music, movies to your HD. Plan B Here is another way: if you want to back up using Time Machine, you will have to go to disk utility Format your drive to Mac os Journaled type, so that the time machine can read and write from it, but this type of format cannot be detected in your Windows laptop. maybe you'll have to use the plan A. hehe i have ibook G4 14" too first timer in mac os i've been using this since my aunt gave this last November 2008.
