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General discussion

LaCie External HD for use with iMac via FireWire an USB

by freighterman_1999 Sep 18, 2007 4:29AM PDT

I just bought a LaCie 500 GB HD for use with my iMac and PC. This drive has a USB port and FireWire 400 and 800. Which, if either, will give the fastest transfer rate? Obviously I have to use the USB port with my PC.

The software that comes with the system states in part that it has "...bootability and professional backup software, it?s designed for professional performance. Easily back up, archive or exchange all of your files, videos, MP3s and JPEGs or upgrade your PC or Mac with additional capacity..."

I assume the software will allow the formating of the drive for a Mac and a small Windows partition. With any OS on the drive it will be bootable.

Is it possible that it will allow me a dual boot after starting the iMac? If I back up XP to this drive I'm wondering if XP can be restored to the NTFS partition?

No doubt the software that comes with the drive will answer these questions, however, since I won't receive the drive until late this week or next and given the fact this is my first external drive, I am curios as to just what options I'll have.

I'm also wondering whether I should do a full back up of OS 10.4.10 now, or wait for Leopard and use the Time Machine? If the software that comes with the drive allows incremental back ups I suppose I wouldn't need to lay out the bucks for the Leopard OS???

Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated.

Discussion is locked

6 Posts
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The answers to most of those questions is, NO
by mrmacfixit Forum moderator Sep 18, 2007 8:03AM PDT

The drive should be formatted, if necessary, to HFS+ using the DIsk Utility in OS X if the drive is to be used exclusively for OS X.
If the drive is to be used exclusively for XP, then NTFS is the way to go.
If both the computers are going to share the drive, then you have a choice.
Either format the drive as FAT32 and both machines can read and write
or
Partition the drive and format one of them as HFS+ and the other as FAT32 (MS-DOS in Disk Utility)
Then connect it to the XP box and format the FAT32 partition as NTFS.
I believe XP requires NTFS to work correctly.

Remember that Windows cannot read or write to HFS+ while the Mac can read but not write to NTFS.

Firewire 800 will give the fastest throughput, followed by FW400 and USB. While USB has a theoretically higher throughput than Firewire 400, it can only achieve that speed in bursts. FW400 can maintain a higher continuous speed.

It is likely that the software on the drive is for Windows machines only. You will see when you plug it in. If you get the message that the drive will need initializing, then you will lose whatever is on the drive. However, if the drive is formatted FAT32, it will mount correctly and you can take a look at the included software. Drag it onto your desktop before you format the drive HFS+.

Currently you cannot Dual Boot from an external drive. By dual boot I assume you mean Windows and OS X.

You should already be doing backups of your data, regardless of whether you have an external drive or not.
IMO, backing up the OS does not really help a lot. You have the OS X installation disk which contains all the applications that came with the machine, you have all the CD/DVD's that hold the applications that you purchased, so the important stuff that needs backing up is that which you have created, music/photos/movies/documents/etc.
Backing up your HOME folder will cover just about all of the above.

Good luck

P

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Setting up external HD
by freighterman_1999 Sep 18, 2007 6:08PM PDT

P

Drive advertised as:

"500GB d2 Quadra Edition External Hard Drive

Fully loaded with all the best interfaces ? eSATA, FireWire 800, FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 ? the d2 Quadra brings you complete universal connectivity. Boasting superior features such as a 16MB cache, advanced 3-level power management, bootability and professional backup software, it?s designed for professional performance. Easily back up, archive or exchange all of your files, videos, MP3s and JPEGs or upgrade your PC or Mac with additional capacity. Its space-saving d2 design by Neil Poulton is so versatile, it can stand upright, stack or be rack-mounted ? safeguarded by the best in heat-dissipating technology. Our LaCie Shortcut Button allows you to easily launch any application with one push, such as the included software EMC

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"Boot XP from external drive".
by Kees Bakker Sep 18, 2007 6:15PM PDT

What exactly do you mean? And why should you do it?

Kees

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I don't think I am mistaken,
by mrmacfixit Forum moderator Sep 18, 2007 10:46PM PDT
"You are mistaken about the Madc not being abole to write to NTFS. I have tar.tbz my entire iPhoto directory and and Parallels directory and stored it on the Windows box (and done a restore.) So I know this works. I just ran out of space on the Windows hard drive, thus the external hard drive."

You could do that using the Parallels "Share" functionality which allows the XP side to place files on the Mac side and vice versa through the "Shared Folder"
OR
You created a backup, placed it on removable media and used that to put it on the XP box
OR
You transferred it across a network to a shared folder on the XP box.

I gather that you are planning on using BootCamp to enable you to boot into XP and run Windows natively. If that is the case, you will NOT be able to boot into XP from the external drive. BootCamp does not allow this to happen. The partitioned drive must be on the internal drive for BootCamp to function. When you install BootCamp, you will find that the external drive is not an option.

As previously stated, Mac OS X can read but NOT write to an NTFS formatted disk without the aid of third party software.
The Windows OS can neither read nor write to an HFS+ formatted disk without the aid of third party software.

If this drive is readable by your Mac and PC without any formatting, then it must be formatted using FAT32 or the like. Both OS's have no problem writing to that format but it is not the most efficient format for either one of them.

I don't see, from the advertisement, where the included software would do the partitioning for you. Maybe I missed something.

Good luck, let us know how you finally set it up

P
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More on external hard drive
by freighterman_1999 Sep 19, 2007 5:46AM PDT

P

I transfered the parallels.tbz and iphoto.tbz to windows box via shared folder on Windows box over network.

I don't plan to to use Boot Camp. I've tried it, Ver 1.2 I believe, but didn't like rebooting between OSes....that's why I am running Parallels.

If software doesn't permit partitioning I'll use disk utility and use Paragon Drive Copy Pro to move XP to NTFS partition. If I can't boot to external HD Boot Camp will be my only option. I would only boot to XP when I'm in gaming mood, otherwise just use Parallels to get to XP.

We shall see.

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Booting
by mrmacfixit Forum moderator Sep 19, 2007 9:40AM PDT

Yes, the transfer of data between a Mac and PC, to a shared folder, is one method but that does not constitute OS X writing to an NTFS drive.

The only choice you have right now to boot into XP, is BootCamp. This software enables the Mac to boot XP, without this software, the Mac will not boot into XP, from any drive.
XP requires certain things to be present, things that the Mac does not use. BIOS for example.

Good luck with the project.

Let us know how you get on

P

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