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Africa · May 20, 2003, 01:06 PM

Does anyone have a good recommendation for an external firewire/USB drive that can be used with Firewire Macs, older iMacs that do not have firewire, like the 233MHz bondi as well as PCs that have USB1 ports?

Stability and multi-use are the highest concerns here. Size preference is 60-100GB.

Africa · May 20, 2003, 05:11 PM

Does anyone have any knowledge of ACOMDATA and their reliability? The ACOMDATA 80 GB Firewire/USB2 drive seems like a good option, but I have not found anyone that knows about this company.

Axo1ot1 · May 20, 2003, 07:05 PM

I think your biggest obstacle is going to be reading the drive format across all the systems. You can format it HFS+ and it will be compatible with the macs, but then you ill have to get some third-party stuff for using it on a PC.

MaxPower2k3 · May 20, 2003, 07:32 PM

you can format it as FAT32 and Mac and PC can both read that (I know OSX can read it, but i'm not positive OS9 can) but OSX writes to FAT32 kind of slow. might be your best option though.

zigzag · May 21, 2003, 10:54 AM

Look at the drives at www.wiebetech.com . They include cross-platform software, or you can buy the software yourself (MacDrive 5).

velocipede · May 21, 2003, 11:09 AM

Originally posted by zigzag:
Look at the drives at www.wiebetech.com . They include cross-platform software, or you can buy the software yourself (MacDrive 5).

You shouldn't need any third-party software to use a hard drive for both platforms. Mac OS 9 and OS X can read FAT32 formatted drives. Whatever drive you buy, simply use a windows formatting utility to format the drive as FAT32 and both platforms can access the drive.

starman · May 21, 2003, 11:13 AM

Get the iomega 20GB Firewire drive. I bought it a year ago and use it all the time on both platforms.

Mike

bradoesch · May 21, 2003, 06:24 PM

OS X does FAT32, but not that well. You'd likely be further ahead to format it as HFS+, then buy MacDrive for the PC. That's if you want to have access to all the data between computers. If the Macs and PCs will be using mostly different files, you could make two partitions-- one HFS+ for the Mac stuff and one FAT32 for the PCs data. Stuff the PCs need from the Mac partition can easiliy be copied to the FAT32 partition if needed.

zigzag · May 21, 2003, 06:52 PM

Originally posted by velocipede:
You shouldn't need any third-party software to use a hard drive for both platforms. Mac OS 9 and OS X can read FAT32 formatted drives. Whatever drive you buy, simply use a windows formatting utility to format the drive as FAT32 and both platforms can access the drive.

I've read that MacDrive is more versatile and reliable than FAT32 formatting. Also, I understand that FAT32 has a 4 GB file limit, which might be a problem for some people.

bradoesch's advice sounds good.

Africa · May 21, 2003, 07:56 PM

I like the solution "velocipede" found from www.wiebetech.com. they have an 80GB 7200rpm drive with Firewire and USB1.1/2.0. Formatting in MacOS Extended format and installing "MacDrive 5.0" on each PC I want to use it with allows the PCs to mount the drive. There will only be a couple PCs here and there I will use it for anyway. MacDrive also comes free with a wiebetech drive.

Also, any partition size limit with an 80GB drive is not a valuable solution.
Thanks.

zigzag · May 21, 2003, 09:01 PM

Originally posted by Africa:
I like the solution "velocipede" found from www.wiebetech.com. . . . Thanks.

You're welcome