Apple iMac help please!!

[getoverit]

Hello Everyone!

I have 2 questions about my iMac. I do not want to pay all that money to see the geek squad. Thought I would start here with my fellow JUBer's.

Before I get to the questions I guess I should provide a little bit of background with this computer. It is a Apple iMac purchased in 2007 and it is running on Snow Leopard. Everything from what I can see it up to date.

Questions:

1. I want to buy an external hard drive so I can take my iTunes and pictures off here in case something ever happened to this and so this can speed up a tad. I just tried connecting my friends external hard drive and I was able to take things off of his and place it in my iTunes but I could not drag anything from my iTunes to it. Could there have been a step I was missing? I did not want to drag my entire iTunes to it , just certain music files. I am now nervous to buy one - but when I get it I want to move my entire iTunes there.

2. A lot of the videos I download are in Windows Media player. I want to easily convert them to Quicktime because in my opinion they run better that way and I do not have to wait for the entire video/movie to load before I can skip around in it. Anyone have any idea how to do that?

Any help would be appreciated!

 

[GamerBear]

Question 1: It might be read-only on your Mac. You may need to reformat the hard drive so that it works on both PC and Mac it might be formatted in NTFS, when I bought my external hard drive it was formatted in NTFS. I went home on my PC and formatted it into FAT32 which can be read & write on a PC and Mac.

I have tried to format using a Mac but it gets too damn complicated and the Mac wants format it so it works with a Mac and when on a PC it will want to format it with it's Windows special formatting. Find a program either on a PC or Mac that will make it FAT32, the only consequence is that it doesn't allow you to copy huge files.

Question 2: I use Handbrake to turn a lot of my video files into Quicktime format or m4v and it can be played on iTunes or even Quicktime most of the time. Try different converting programs to see which works better but again I simply use Handbrake because its free.

 

[trawler69]

On the video side I know flip4mac will do it (free version). VLC player, or at least the version I have, can do it too.

Like Gamerbear says check the drive format. Fat32 is most versatile and what you should use.

 

[getoverit]

Thank you guys! I appreciate it greatly!!

 

[andysayshi]

1 - The drive you were using was formatted in NTFS, the Windows format. Mac OS can read from NTFS drives but can't natively write to them. To get around this, you can:

• Reformat the drive in the Mac format called HFS+. Just go to Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility, select the drive, and partition it in HFS+. Note that this will erase the drive, and will also mean it won't be compatible with most Windows machines. If you plan to back up your system with Apple's Time Machine tool you must use this option.

or
• Reformat the drive in a universal format called ExFAT. Same procedure as above, but ExFAT is compatible with all Macs with Snow Leopard or higher, and with all Windows machines with Vista or higher.

or
• Install an NTFS driver in your Mac. There are free versions like NTFS-3G, but my preference is Paragon NTFS because it's very fast. Paragon NTFS is less than 20 bucks to buy.

I install Paragon on all my Macs and then never even think about drive formats ever again.


2 - Install the free Flip4Mac product (as mentioned above) to make Windows Media fully compatible with Quicktime. While you're at it, install the free Perian codec package, which will make virtually every other common video format available to Quicktime as well.

 

[getoverit]

^Thank you

I have no idea how to use Flip4Mac. I am too slow when it comes to computer software. I also can not figure out Handbrake. I downloaded it but I can not find it in my applications. Gosh I am so slow.

 

[silverbelt]

Just going to +1 exFAT. Works flawlessly on Windows and Mac.
+1 for Handbrake too. Good support, great performance.

When you download Handbrake, you'll likely get a .dmg, which is technically a "disk image". Think of it like a container. When you open it, Finder mounts it and it appears like an external drive (or just a folder, really). You can then drag the Handbrake.app from the disk image to your Applications folder. Be sure to unmount or eject the disk image when you're done, as you no longer need it.

 

[getoverit]

^ Thank you!!!