FLAC music on external hard drive - readable by Windows AND Mac??

[Empgamer]

I've posted the below in the Mac forum too but, as it is specifcially around digital music, I thought I'd also post it here in case anyone has tried to do what I am contemplating.

Not being 100% certain on precisely how external hard drives do their job I'm posting this just to ensure I am not going to try something that will just not work.

At home I have a Windows XP PC running Media Centre and am in the process of riping albums to FLAC. I have also bought a Seagate FreeAgent 320G external HDD and plan to copy all of the FLAC (or possibly even rip the remainedr direct) to it. I suspect for ease of handling the copies of the FLAC music should go into a folder of some sorts on the drive. The reason for this copying is for an impending period of working overseas. I want to take my music on a HDD with me, not the CDs.

Now, once I get overseas I need to be able to 'manage' the music/folders on that Seagate with a MacBook, primarily just to get the music onto a NAS, which I plan to buy out there, so it can be played with a Sonos which I can also likely buy out there.

The main concern I have is that the Mac will either not be able to 'read' the folders etc which have been created with a Windows PC or, even worse, will not be able to even see/access the drive. I know the drive is straight ''plug and play and requires no formatting or software, I'm just not so sure they are usable by a Mac as much as they are a Windows PC or, more importantly whether they are usable/readable by one when they have been uploaded by another.

Any thoughts on this appreciated. There's no major problem if it won't work, I'll just grab someone else's Windows laptop and manage the music to the NAS with that. I would though like to be able to use the Seagate as a hard disk back up for the Mac if that was possible.

[stevos]

I am not Mac expert (never used one) but i am 99.9% certain that Mac's can now read pc filing systems. It therefore should be as simple as plugging the drive into the Mac's usb port.

The rest sounds like a good plan and also once you buy the NAS it will give you 2 copies of your music for back up purposes (i seriously need to do this)

[Autopilot]

And also never rip direcct to an extrernal USB HDD - always rip to system HDD and copy over (same for a NAS). You can get a away with it, but its bad practice as it can go wrong.

[stevos]

I ripped all my music directly to my nas and it worked fine. The only problem was that it is a network drive rather than usb and so the performance was very slow.

In my case i should have ripped to the system drive and then copied, but i see no issue with copying directly to a usb drive.

[lazymatt]

Originally Posted by stevos

I ripped all my music directly to my nas and it worked fine. The only problem was that it is a network drive rather than usb and so the performance was very slow.

In my case i should have ripped to the system drive and then copied, but i see no issue with copying directly to a usb drive.

You can get serious issues with latency.

Whenever I've had people who've ripped (usually a load) of CD's and then find they jump & skip, a little investigation usually reveals they've ripped directly to an external (NAS/USB/Firewire) drive. If you got away with it, great but I would seriously suggest ripping to your system drive in future.

[Empgamer]

Amendment: Rip to PC, dump to external HDD, access by Mac, move/copy to NAS

I hope

[lazymatt]

Also, if it helps, I frequently do jobs for people with Macs. I work off a PC platform, and have no problems (so far) with NAS drives. I simply load them up here, and take them to the customers house and hook them up to their network. So far this generally seems to have been FLAC files for use with a Sonos system.
We always use Buffalo drives, but I'm not sure any other drive would be any different. In fact, the older Buffalo drives don't officially even have Mac support, but there's never been a problem.

[Empgamer]

Thanks Matt. I will probably be going for the Linkstation Live but I am quite taken with the TS 209 Pro. That fact that it's silent helps. Is the Linkstation Live comparable in size? I've not seen either physically yet.

[lazymatt]

Depends which ones you go for.

The single drive Linkstation units are the same at the Qnap 109's. The 209's are double drive units, so a little bigger & there's not really a comparable Buffalo unit that I know of. The Buffalo Terastations are 4 drive units and pretty large (heavy too), but quieter than the normal Linkstations.

[Empgamer]

It'd probably be in the 500GB range I'd be looking at. Either a Linkstation Live or the TS 109 Pro.