Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

firewire drive compatibility deals

Dec 23, 2010 8:33AM PST

hi all,
i have an ext HDD formatted with NTFS. it has a lot of problems in working on macs. the mac OS is only able to read and not write to the drive.
so i am planning to buy a firewire drive for mac. and wondering -
1- can a firewire drive work on windows computers?
so will i be able to transfer data from my mac to windows OS ?
2- where can i get good deals on firewire drives ?
thanks!

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Firewire
Dec 23, 2010 10:06PM PST

Yes, of course a FIrewire drive will work on Windows computers as long as the Windows computer is Firewire (IEEE1394) compatible.
See the documentation that came with your machine.

Technically there is no difference between a Mac drive and a Windows drive, other than the format that is applied to it, and your currently problem will not be solved with the solution you propose.
If you purchase a Firewire external drive and you format it for the Mac, Mac OSX Extended(journaled), then it will work fine with the Mac but the Windows machine will not be able to read or write to it!
However, if you format it as FAT32, then both machines will be able to read and write to it. Problem here is that FAT32 is not a particularly good format to use. It does not like large files and has a tendency to make stuff disappear.

Another solution, which does not involve spending a chunk of change, is to install NTFS for Mac on the Mac. This will enable the Mac to read and write to an NTFS formatted disk with no problems at all.
For the princely sum of $20.00 and a visit to http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/
your problem will go away.
There is a "free" piece of software that also does the same job. You will find that here: http://macntfs-3g.blogspot.com/

If you are bound and determined to get an external Firewire drive, remember they are more expensive than USB drives, take a look at www.macsales.com but bear in mind that your problem, regarding reading and writing NTFS or OS X Extended will still be there.

P

- Collapse -
I'll also note
Dec 23, 2010 10:09PM PST

I'll also note that earlier versions of Windows, like XP and below, are quite tempermental regarding firewire devices. Vista and Windows 7 have improved things considerably, but I don't know if I'd want to rely on that.

- Collapse -
Beyond tempermental.
Dec 23, 2010 10:33PM PST

After a spate of helping folk recover firewire drive data on FAT32 volumes connected to Windows machines I can't write this is a good idea. In fact, if you want to repeat the exercise of data recovery, mix firewire, FAT32 and Windows.

Bob

- Collapse -
so i would be better of keeping 2 drives ?
Dec 24, 2010 1:45AM PST

thanks all !
looks like the FAT32 route is out of question. it sounds unreliable.
see, basically i sort of want to make sure that i keep backup of my data. thats why i wanted a drive.
even with my older toshiba laptop, i backed up data in a WDC ext drive.
so is there another way of backing up data?
not a pen drive because that it sort of unreliable.
also, i am not keen on playing around with the filing system of the mac now. so dont think will go for the software that converts the format to NTFS. and if it has to be the ext HDD then i guess ill just keep both my old NTFS drive, and the new firewire drive with mac partitioning. right?

- Collapse -
It depends
Dec 24, 2010 6:18AM PST

It depends on what kind of systems you're dealing with. Because you can use file sharing to abstract the filesystem out of the equation.

So if one system were more or less perpetually on, you could set the drive up as a fileshare. Then you could use HFS+ or NTFS and access it with full read/write capabilities from any other system. As long as the system it's attached to can read the filesystem, you're good to go. That's how I access an external drive on my iMac from my HTPC running Win7. Drive is formatted as HFS+, which Windows can't read, but it's shared via SMB, which abstracts out the filesystem.

- Collapse -
You misunderstood the software I told you about
Dec 24, 2010 6:47AM PST

it does NOT change the format of the Mac drive or the Windows drive.

It merely enables the Mac to be able to read and write to a Windows formatted disk, thus solving your problem

And yes, if you purchase an external firewire drive for the Mac, you should format the drive as Mac OS X Extended(journaled)


P

- Collapse -
If I was to tackle this
Dec 27, 2010 9:17AM PST

I'd read mrmacfixit's reply and use that to give my Apple NTFS capability.
Bob