found out that it was formatted for a mixed Mac/PC system, and this is ok for me- to a point. Only to a point- if I try to transfer files that contain special characters (é or even "?" !) - I get not one error, not two, not three but -50 of them. So, reformatted the drive as a Mac HFS+ drive, and will start what may be 20-plus hours worth of file transfer tomorrow. (Or not- not going to transfer most of the applications and some other data. We'll see. I am somewhat the packrat though.)
Night!
Eric
