macs and external hard drives

[v1r4L fr3nzy]

I'm thinking of buying a powerbook. The problem is: I have this external hdd with all my music, pictures, docs, etc which is currently in operation with my PC (winxp). I was wondering whether it would be possible to simply reconnect the hard drive to the powerbook and still manage to have the same access to all the files. My initial reaction was that there could be some compatibility issues, but then again, I don't really know much about macs. Any help?

[pam123]

As far as I know the MAC won't be able to read the files from the external hdd you have formatted for XP.
What you can do, provided the music files are mp3s or iTunes, is burn them to backup disks and transfer them over to iTunes when you get the new powerbook.
If they're wma files you'd have to burn them as audio disks and re-rip them to iTunes.
Something similar applies to text files if you created them in Office and your powerbook has the MAC version of Office (watch the version number here, Office 97 files won't make the trip).
Other than that I just don't know.

[glc]

If it's formatted FAT32, the Mac can read and write to the drive. If it's NTFS, nope.

[Mac Medic]

OS X will read and write to both FAT and NTFS, it is, after all a windows world and we have to fit in somehow. :(

[pam123]

Every time I think I know I get another surprise. :o
Info here : http://images.apple.com/macosx/pdf/MacOSX_Windows_TB.pdf

[v1r4L fr3nzy]

wonderful! thank you!