Sharing the same external drive with a MacBook and a PC

by sarawut1065 Jun 8, 2006 2:48AM PDT

Hello -
I have a pc that is running Windows XP Media Center Edition. I am about to buy a MacBook since I want a laptop. I have two external hard drives that I use with my pc. One is empty and one has a bunch of files on it. Both have been formatted as NTFS. I understand that if I format the drive as FAT32, both systems can read/write to the drive. But can a MacBook at least read a drive that is formatted as NTFS? I have all my mp3 files and photos and vids on my pc and I'd like to be able to transfer them to the MacBook via the external hard drive. Will I be able to do so without having to convert the drive to FAT32 first? I suppose I could reformat my empty harddrive to FAT32 and move stuff to that drive first. Would I lose my long file names if I did that? Plus wouldn't I have a problem with my drive being over 100 gigs? And finally, how does one format a drive to FAT32? Will it simply be an option I choose when I run the formatting program? Thanks! Paul

Discussion is locked

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Drive Sharing

by mrmacfixit Forum moderator Jun 8, 2006 8:24AM PDT

There is more than one way to skin a cat.
I figure that you were going to just plug the drive into the Mac and go from there. The Mac "Should" be able to read an NTFS drive, for some reason, they sometimes can't. Try it and see. If it fails, move along to plan B

Plan B
If you are planning on moving all your MP3's from the large HD then how about the following.
When your MacBook arrives, create a network with it and your other machine.
Connect to the Mac and then "push" the MP3 files from the HD, which the PC can read, to the Mac. Note that this is slightly different from the Mac connecting to the PC and "pulling" the stuff over. If your Mac cannot read NTFS, the "pulling" method will also fail.
FAT32 should be an option during the format process. What size is the drive?
Yes, you may loose your long file names.
Bob has a more in depth knowledge of this last section. I'm sure he will drop some advice here.

P

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Mac access to FAT 32 and other drives

by dantanman Jun 11, 2006 11:05AM PDT

I'm beginning to believe that there are some real drive access problems with Mac OS 10. (Am running 10.4.6 on a year-old iMac G5, so nobody give me the "Oh you must not have the latest..." nonsense.)

1) I use a 300 GB drive formatted FAT 32 in FireWire/USB2 enclosure for backup and the ability of the Mac to recognize it is incredibly unpredictable. I'll go for weeks with nothing showing in directories (by the sound of the drive it is clear that bootup and various other functions of the computer do get its attention, however.) Hot swapping, rebooting with a freshly restarted drive, restarting the drive following computer reboot, all the usual stuff has no effect. Then after some other restart, the bloody thing starts to work and continues to for a few days, then becomes a patient out of Awakenings again for some weeks more. There is no difference using USB 2 and FireWire.

2) Occasionally my Mac starts up and after the chime, then gives a blank screen about two minutes long after which the fan starts running louds enouogh to seem like a DC3 is going to take off with a black screen. Unplugging, power button held on until the very loud ugly high beep comes on is the usual fix.) I have recently noticed that this only happens when high capacity USB sticks are plugged in, and when it won't come back to life after a few tries, removing the stick before restart does the trick.

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What I do

by robertmro Jun 8, 2006 10:48PM PDT

I have a PowerBook G4 connected (via ethernet) to a PC (running XP Pro) and swap files all the time. I'm not a computer geek, so if I can do it, so can you.

Here's how I do it. I setup the PC as a server for a workgroup named ''workgroup'' but you can use any name. Then I connected the Mac (via ethernet through a router) and made it part of the workgroup. It was a little tricky as I recall, but definitely possible with a little experimenting.

I have multiple drives on the PC (and the Mac) and can connect to any shared folder on any drive on the PC. I generally connect from the Mac to the PC instead of the other way around because it is easier (everything on the Mac is easier) and safer. It's safer because I also have a wireless router and it looks to me like it would easy for someone to hack into my home directory on the Mac if I enable sharing.

FAT32 is not necessary and I don't recommend it.

A really cool thing that you can do is basically make any of the PC drives (except the one you boot from) one big shared folder, then you can access anything on it from the Mac.

As I said, I'm not a computer geek so maybe some out there can tell you a better way, but this works well for me.

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For kislowski

by mrmacfixit Forum moderator Jun 9, 2006 5:48AM PDT

I deleted the post about Macs and PC's from aintnorainbowdorothy as being off topic and entirely besides the point.

Your reply was orphaned and may also have been deleted.
thought I'd let you know

P

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Thanks

by kislowski-21025351886500553021801503394682 Jun 11, 2006 5:21AM PDT

I appreciate your note and I agree that his post was off topic.

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Set up a NAS

by bb7250 Jun 16, 2006 5:27AM PDT

I set up a Network Attached Storage device on my network and my PC's and MacBook both attach via ethernet. I use the Linksys NAS box and plug two external USB drives into it. The NAS will format the drives into its own format, so you would need to temporarily move the files off the one drive, format it with the NAS and then copy the files back onto it. I have a 300 and a 500 GB drive attached to mine and the connections never drop.

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NAS-enclosures for ordinary drives?

by dantanman Jun 17, 2006 3:44AM PDT

I'm familiar with RAID appliances like SNAP drives - these are omnivorous when it comes to file formats, making them great for common backup from different platforms. They can be pricey, and the increased capacity of normal drives has undercut their market for small users (i.e. I've just glanced past all ads for external hard drivew for about the past five years.) There is an enclosure advertised as NAS made by Memory Upgrades (ACP Tritton):
http://reviews.cnet.com/ACP_Tritton_Network_Attached_Storage_Enclosure/4507-3243_7-31752367.html?tag=nav

The link is from CNET Reviews, no user reviews and I can't find the company website. Does anyone know how well these work? (It's a given that they don't have the redundancy of RAID.) Are there other models/manufacturers anyone knows?

Sharing the same external drive with a MacBook and a PC

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