Making Headlines

One of our Boca Raton computer repair experts recently encountered the following problem regarding PCs, Macs and data transfers.

A client was employing a 1-gigabyte USB flash drive to move files between her Windows laptop PC (work) and MacBook (home).

The problem arose when this did not work with the 160-gigabyte external drive the client used to back up the MacBook in question.

In fact, the Windows laptop in question didn't even recognize the external drive when it's connected. What's the problem?

Here's the issue:

Our Fort Lauderdale computer repair experts discerned that the storage formats used by Mac and Windows operating systems are different.

While that may sound obvious, the full explanation is a more complex: A Mac OS can read its own file format (obviously) and the one used by Windows, however Windows PCs can read only PC files - unless you take the extra step of adding some third-party software that enables it to read Mac files.

In this case, the Boca Raton computer repair expert believed the flash drive worked between the Windows and Mac computers because she originally formatted it for Windows - making the flash drive therefore readable, by both the Apple and Microsoft operating systems. That turned out to be correct.

To resolve a potentially confusing situation rather easily, we recommended using a PC utility program such as MacDisk for Windows, which allows a Windows PC to read and write in the Apple operating system format. Case closed!