I have a person coming to my place with an external USB MAC formatted hard drive and an iMovie .m4v file. Is there a program, preferably free, that will allow me to read this drive?


I'll be using PPro CS3 to "hopefully" read the .m4v file.

You shouldn't have any problems; I never have. Your mileage, of course, may vary.

It depends on how the Mac drive has been formatted - there is only one compatible format, FAT32 (that has it's own issues with the 4GB file size limit).

Ervin's right. Had this problem last week, using a LaCie drive formatted as Mac OS Extended, on a co-worker's PC w/Vista (whatever the business version is called).

Vista will act like a new drive has been attached but unless it's formatted FAT32, Windows Explorer will not see it.

If it's FAT32 you're fine, otherwise you'll need a plan B.

There is software for Windows to read OS X filesystems (around $100 IIRC), but I prefer to use NTFS and access it with NTFS-3g under OS X. (It's far superior to FAT32.)

One is MacDrive (http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/freetrial/) ($49.95; $59.95 for 2 PC license). Downloadable 5 day trial. Can read all mac formatted media, XP and Vista compatible.

George/