New MAC user. I have a couple of easy questions.

B

BKSinAZ

New Member
Thinking of buying an external WD hard drive.

If I format it as NTFS, will the MAC be able to see it and write to it?
What about FAT32...will the MAC be able to see the hard drive and write to it?

You probably wonder why I do not format it to a MAC partition, but I need to backup data on both a MAC and a separate XP machine.

I guess I am asking how to format the new external drive to be seen by BOTH types of computers?
 
If you format it on a windows it won't save to it, at least that is what i have found with a friends mac, so format it on a mac and then you should be fine.
 
you can use fat32, however there is a limut of 4 GB PER file, so if you have a iso image that is 5 GB it will not work
 
Mac's can read / write to external partition (external hard drives)
I've done it so many times.
if you still can't write to it i suggest you install NTFS 3G and MacFuse on your Apple computer
However the OP can also partition the drive let's say 50/50, one partition being NTFS and the other being MacOS journaled.
so in this respect you get a partition for XP and a partition for the Mac.
I do not advise you to format to Fat because like Brian said, Fat has limits to amount of data

cheers
 
Last edited:
patrickv said:
Mac's can read / write to external partition (external hard drives)
I've done it so many times.
if you still can't write to it i suggest you install NTFS 3G and MacFuse on your Apple computer
However the OP can also partition the drive let's say 50/50, one partition being NTFS and the other being MacOS journaled.
so in this respect you get a partition for XP and a partition for the Mac.
I do not advise you to format to Fat because like Brian said, Fat has limits to amount of data

cheers
Click to expand...

You don't need FUSE for the NTFS 3G anymore... Or at least, that's what the NTFS 3G site says...

I would format that external to NTFS and install the NTFS 3G driver. Right now, I have my 500GB External My Book formatted for FAT32. I have all kinds of .dmg's on there, of course, none that exceed 4GB.

If you were running Vista SP1 instead of XP, I would tell you to format with exFAT... But, I dunno if OSX would be compatible with it.
 
/\E said:
You don't need FUSE for the NTFS 3G anymore
Click to expand...
You say you don't need NTFS 3g then you say, install the ntfs driver...
what are you even talking about ?
isn't that what i said ?

read my post properly.
I said :
if you still can't write to it
Click to expand...
which means if he can't write to the external then he'd use the driver :rolleyes:
anyways i also think the OP might be interested in THIS
 
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patrickv said:
You say you don't need NTFS 3g then you say, install the ntfs driver...
what are you even talking about ?
isn't that what i said ?

read my post properly.
I said :

which means if he can't write to the external then he'd use the driver :rolleyes:
anyways i also think the OP might be interested in THIS
Click to expand...

If you knew half of what you're talking about, my post wouldn't seem that abstract. The NTFS-3G used to depend upon MacFUSE to work, apparently NTFS-3G has been made so that it doesn't need MacFUSE. I was simply noting that... Once again, it didn't seem abstract...

NTFS-3G.org
Please note that NTFS-3G doesn't require the FUSE user space package anymore.
Click to expand...
---
patrickv said:
if you still can't write to it i suggest you install NTFS 3G and MacFuse on your Apple computer
Click to expand...

Hmm...looked like an "and" statement to me...
 
/\E said:
Hmm...looked like an "and" statement to me...
Click to expand...

Yeah and ?
Correct me here, so NTFS 3g now works as a standalone ?
wow am so 1973 now.
i mean i only install the driver and that is it ?

cause i've seen various people complaining on other forums that without the fuse tools the driver most times won't work.
correct me here
 
patrickv said:
Yeah and ?
Correct me here, so NTFS 3g now works as a standalone ?
wow am so 1973 now.
i mean i only install the driver and that is it ?

cause i've seen various people complaining on other forums that without the fuse tools the driver most times won't work.
correct me here
Click to expand...

Okay...My bad...my bad

The FUSE package is not needed for Linux but it is still needed for OSX.

I just looked under Installation on their homepage and saw that, I thought you were implying that the FUSE package was needed, so yeah...
 
/\E said:
Okay...My bad...my bad

The FUSE package is not needed for Linux but it is still needed for OSX.

I just looked under Installation on their homepage and saw that, I thought you were implying that the FUSE package was needed, so yeah...
Click to expand...

oh ok cool thanks !!

cheers
 
Chiming in late, but I have to ask one question. Is this drive going to be a local external drive or a network drive? If network drive you can just use SMB and not have to worry about third party support to make NTFS writable. You can use any file system you want to.

ACLs and permissions may not work cross platform like that, but that isn't the end of the world.

Almost all of them use the nfts.progs from source forge for their open source read/write NTFS support. Do note that Microsoft does not openly support this so its not like 100% full proof. I have seen issues with this stuff before so I think it would be better to just set up a NAS and then have that NAS back up to firewire or tape or optical for redundancy.

http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/
 
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