Newest Post:
Well today it arrived, I put it all together and connected it to my mac! Works great! Tried Mac Drive nice but not really want to pay that much! Any way I have another Question:
My mac has a partitioned Hard Drive and I am wanting to fix this, I am thinking of doing a backup (somehow?) of everything, Apps, settings, documents.... Then deleting the Hard Drive, then booting from my external Hard Drive and transferring everything back to my mac's HDD. Will this work? What things will I require? And any suggestions?

Thanks,
Meh 626

Original Post:
Hi,

Well I just bought my first external hard drive from buymac.com.au it's a Mini G2 (USB 2.0/FW400) case with a 160GB WD HDD.

I am wondering is formating it for Mac OS Extended worth it and will it work on PC's?

Any other tips and tricks appreciated!

Thanks
Meh 626

Not formatted as HFS+ it won't.

Needs FAT32 to be cross platform.

Ok, will it still have a high data rate when using it on a mac?

Thanks
Meh 626

the data rate will be the same (not 100% :P), the main issue with fat32 is that you are limited to 4gb file size

this is another option...

http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/

HFS+ (Journaled) is the default format for Mac HDDs these days, so if you will be attaching it mostly to a Mac use that format.

Be aware that if you format the disk this way you will not be able to access the HDD in the case via USB/Firewire on your PC, unless you get MacDrive (link above).

I have found the best way to deal with this situation is to format the drive as I suggested and then "share" the HDD via File Sharing (in Leopard).

To do this, go to System Preferences/Sharing/File Sharing and drag the HDD icon from the Finder to the list in the File Sharing tab. You might want to change the permissions for the HDD in this list to read/write (or whatever suits you).

When did Mac/PC formats get so far apart?

I remember in the 90's formating any new floppy discs as PC format, so I could use them at Uni on their PCs and at home on my Mac...

Now, it's a real hassle to cross the divide...

Mac and PC disk formats have always been worlds apart -- they started out that way, even before the Mac first appeared, with Apple essentially pioneering affordable disk systems with the Apple II back in 1979. Apple didn't bother giving even the slightest bit of lip-service to the MS-DOS 'standard' until 1987 when they introduced their short-lived Apple PC 5.25 Drive and added 'FDHD' floppies to most machines. PC Format was a commercial Apple add-on (that is, not provided with the OS) from 1987 to 1990.

Up until the introduction of Windows 2000 in 1999, most Windows machines still used FAT16 and FAT32, a file-system that was for all intents and purposes an open spec -- anyone could source the full details on how the FS worked, and could write their own methods of interacting with it if they so chose. NTFS, on the other hand, was one of the key factors in Microsoft's premier server system "NT" and as such, they guarded the spec for NTFS most zealously. They still do, but in recent years they are willing to 'license' the NTFS spec to anyone who can front up the fairly large amount of cash and sign an NDA that they won't redistribute the full spec.

By comparison, Apple are fairly liberal about who gets to see how HFS (and its variants) work -- become an ADC member and buy the (fairly cheap) spec on HFS.

With very few exceptions (such as KNFS for Unix and Paragon NTFS for OSX), all non-Microsoft implementations of NTFS are based on reverse-engineering, some of which has been released as open-source or free code. Read access was fairly straight forward, and has proven to be stable, and Apple use this code themselves with OSX.

Writing to NTFS is where the problems lie, as Microsoft have added many subtle tweaks to NTFS over the years, adding index hashes, security controls and ADS (Alternate Data Streams), none of which they are willing to tell people about unless they pay highly for the privilege.

Thanks to XP, NTFS is now the default file system for Windows machines, leaving FAT32 as the only truly viable "universal" file system for all OSes. Microsoft don't want to know about anything other than what they themselves have developed (and especially have no desire to add HFS support outside of their 'Services For Macintosh' server software) and Apple feel the same about NTFS.

There you go, today's history lesson

Thanks Brains I like history.

Interesting.

I remember when I realised I could format my floppies to run on both systems, thinking to myself - wow, probably wont be too long before this is made even easier...

And of course, ha - it went the other way.

I didn't actually realise this fact however until just last year, when we (my uni film group) had to buy our own external HDD to record/edit our films. The student who bought a drive wanted to use it on both the Macs at Uni, and her PC at home... I had no idea it was going to be such a dilemma!

So sad...

It's an unusal predicament, isn't it.

Of course, OSX has got SMB (ye olde Windows "Network Neighborhood") support built in these days, thanks to some reverse engineering.

Seeing as SMB is more ubiquitous than eiher HFS or NTFS is, instead of getting a USB or Firewire external drive, why not shell out a few dollars more and get a stand-alone portable NAS drive instead?

Tight!!


Thanks, I'll look into that.


Thanks for all the replies guys, it should arrive very soon!

Well today it arrived, I put it all together and connected it to my mac! Works great! Tried Mac Drive nice but not really want to pay that much! Any way I have another Question:
My mac has a partitioned Hard Drive and I am wanting to fix this, I am thinking of doing a backup (somehow?) of everything, Apps, settings, documents.... Then deleting the Hard Drive, then booting from my external Hard Drive and transferring everything back to my mac's HDD. Will this work? What things will I require? And any suggestions?

Thanks,
Meh 626

Can he just use Carbon Copy Cloner, then use setup assistant when he reinstalls the OS??

Were do I find Carbon Copy Cloner?

Thanks

http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html

Can someone verify what I said above??