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nafai23 · Feb 24, 2005, 01:50 PM

i was going to make or get an external firewire 800 drive to share with my pc and new g5 when it arrives...
my question is if I put all my divx, jpgs, music etc etc on the drive can they be easily accessed by both computers as if each drive is there own?
also I know this maybe totally impossible but if the firewire 800 was plugged into the mac and the usb2.0 to the pc could the drive show up on both computers and be usuable at the same time?
thanks
chad

skorpiond · Feb 25, 2005, 11:08 AM

Originally posted by nafai23:
i was going to make or get an external firewire 800 drive to share with my pc and new g5 when it arrives...
my question is if I put all my divx, jpgs, music etc etc on the drive can they be easily accessed by both computers as if each drive is there own?
also I know this maybe totally impossible but if the firewire 800 was plugged into the mac and the usb2.0 to the pc could the drive show up on both computers and be usuable at the same time?
thanks
chad

I'm a PC guy and I haven't even gotten my Mac yet (should be getting it today) but here is a write up that might help...

nafai23 · Feb 25, 2005, 11:20 AM

i did a little searching my self and that info is a little dated but for both of us...
I saw that if you used a third party disk software for pc you can format the drive in fat32 at any size and that pretty much will do it....
make both machines see it...
but I would love to hear someone with personal experience

kiazer · Feb 25, 2005, 03:54 PM

Yes you can share your external drive with your PC, I do this all the time (USB2 120 gig drive hooked to my MDD), I use sharepoints to make a share and point it to your external drive (I have ignore permissions on this volume turned on)

Then from the PC click > Start > run and type in the IP address like this \\xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx or if you have a DHCP server you may be able to do this by name. the shared external volume that you created on your Mac should now be visiable.

ideasculptor · Feb 25, 2005, 06:16 PM

There is very little reason to physically plug a hard drive into both computers (you CANNOT do it simultaneously, but you could switch back and forth). Instead, just plug the disk into whichever computer is always on, and then share it. The other computer can access it over the network. That way, both machines can access the disk simultaneously AND you don't need to worry about how the disk is formatted. You can mount an HFS+ disk on the mac and still share it to a windows box, although you won't be able to plug it in to the windows box, physically.

--sam

nafai23 · Feb 25, 2005, 11:19 PM

what about using the cable modem for the network connection...wouldnt that require two ethernet jacks?

anthonyvthc · Feb 25, 2005, 11:29 PM

Originally posted by nafai23:
what about using the cable modem for the network connection...wouldnt that require two ethernet jacks?

Dude, you need a router. That really doesn't have anything to do with the FW drive.

nafai23 · Feb 26, 2005, 12:17 AM

exactly I would never buy a FW drive...just another internal if i was going to do that

anthonyvthc · Feb 26, 2005, 12:28 AM

ok, i don't know what your setup is going to be like, but if you can stand using the USB connection from the cable modem, your ethernet ports would be free to allow internet sharing (along with file sharing). This would not require a router. Then you could use either comps internal drive to store files, thus eliminating the need for the external.
PS. I've had OK results using the USB connection before, BTW.