[tws]

folks,

i recently aquired the macbook pro 17" - my first mac. it is cable attached to my current OLD nonwireless linksys router and can share/read/write to my other 3 pc's...

i've got two new 500 gb external harddrives and have only formated one so far (i use it alternately on the PC and the laptop)... i formated the external drive in windows as FAT 32 so both XP and OS X could read and write to it... there is the size limitation issue and perhaps others i'm not yet aware of... rather poor coding of the apple OS X which creates little ds.store, et. al. files all over the drive, seen only by the windows OS. i had to purchase and install a third party program to eliminate all the apple 'litter' files.

anyway.

i'm relucant to format the newest drive until i understand what apple hardware and OS leopard (which i'll probably upgrade too when it becomes available) are capable of handling... so far i'm not too impressed.

i'd like to aquire a gigabite wireless router with a usb2 connection for HD's, printers etc. unforunately the apple airport extreme seems to be fraught with problems and no gigabite thruput for the cable connected pc's...

i'm stumped... i can't easily find a suitable router -

possible one of these -
D-Link Xtreme N Gigabit Router
or...Linksys WRT350N.

i'd like to share the HD's via the routers usb2 connectionality and not have to worry about file compatibility sharing/read/write problems (just data files on these drives).

the more i read these forums and others the more confused i become. it seems my only two choices are poor ones. either i format in apple HFS+ (which i understand puts the apple/system on the drive like microsoft used too when formated with/s) and makes it BLIND to microsoft...or format as FAT 32 which has it's own limitations...

is there a thread or faq which clearly explains this networking/hardware configurating method in laymans terms?

thanks for your patience and help.
tws

[OreoCookie]

First of all, a few things: there are no size limitations for external drives in OS X that are due to OS X. USB drives are limited to 2 TB/volume (aka partition) which is due to USB2 specifications. Reading and writing to FAT32 volumes works just fine.

The extra files you see are akin to Windows' thumbs.db files (which Windows creates automatically in folders with pictures and which is usually hidden in the Explorer): they contain OS X-specific information. It's not a matter of `good' or `bad' programming.

You can also teach Windows to read HFS+ volumes (if you want to), but it'd be easier if you stick to FAT32.

Regarding your second question, I think you are a bit confused here: Leopard is the code name of the next major version of MacOS X (similar to Longhorn which used to be the code name for Windows Vista). Your machine will run Leopard just fine.

Lastly, I cannot recommend plugging your external hd into a new router's USB port: usually the transfer speeds are unbearably slow (measured in kB/s) as they are limited by the cpu power of the router).

As to your choices of filesystems: you can teach Windows how to read HFS+ volumes or stay with FAT32. Staying with FAT32 is easier. There are no limitations which are due to MacOS X, FAT32 works just fine, just limitations inherent to FAT32.

[OreoCookie]

There are instructions here to prevent OS X from creating .DS_Store files on networked volumes. If you want to delete all .DS_Store files on your external harddrive, you can find instructions here if you want to do it on your Mac or here if you want to do it with the Explorer on your PC. Both solutions are free and require no downloads of software. Don't do this on your internal Macintosh harddrive!

If you are willing to pay US$10, then you can get a little program that does it for you.

[tws]

thanks oreocookie,

i did buy the blue harvest program.

i agree, so far FAT 32 seems to be easier. however i cannot copy large dvd ISO files to the drive formated as fat 32 - that is a limitation.

apparently i've been reading hype... as it has been expressed elsewhere that it is better and safer to mount your external HD's on the routers usb port - several if you have a hub. i believe a large part of the confusion and misery is caused by non existent manuals or read me files about how all this stuff works together. i got very little hard copy with my macbookpro.

[mduell]

To handle big files, format the drive as NTFS and use macfuse+3g-ntfs (free) on OSX (Windows supports it natively).

[tws]

thanks mduell,

this is from another forum:

"have you considered going about it from the other direction and formating HFS+ then using something like MacDrive from the Windows side? That would seem to still accomplish your goals, giving you something more solid (and with better metadata and such) then FAT, while maintaining usefulness for both platforms. MacDrive isn't free, but if you're using it for serious work then $50 doesn't seem too bad, and there may be other solutions as well that are free and also work (since it would seem to be a long standing issue too). Good luck."

in another words it's all developing crap.

with no knowledge about what the new apple OS leopard is going to feature... how is someone supposed to decided when or IF to buy $50 add-on ware to make non compatible drives communicate? and for how long? how stable can one expect these drives to be it they require extra software and tweaking to work?

i think most people buy the external HD's to backup and store data files LONGTERM... microsoft and apple have an obligation to make these storage devices work together...

they are doing a piss poor job.

[mduell]

Yea, HFS+ and MacDrive in Windows works, but it costs $50 more than NTFS and macfuse/3g-ntfs and doesn't help if you should use Linux or FreeBSD in the future (both of which fuse/3g-ntfs support). Apple may switch filesystems to ZFS in 10.5 or 10.6, which would require more addon software for Windows.

It's not in Microsoft's or Apple's interest to be interoperable; encouraging lock-in is quite profitable.