[kg109]

I need to transfer all the data from my PC at work, to my G5 at home. Is it possible to slave a PC hard drive to my G5's hard drive? I haven't even really opened the box to take a look yet, but thought I'd be just as easy to ask here...

Otherwise I guess I'm burnin' a bunch of DVDs?......

thanks.

[Lateralus]

The drive from the PC would have to be a Serial ATA drive. Chances are that it is not though. You could either burn the data, or spend $30-40 for a USB2/FireWire external drive enclosure from NewEgg.

[kg109]

ah....'wish I knew about that when I was transferring the data from my home PC to the G5 when I made "the switch" a few months ago.

So this enclosure basically just houses a hard drive, and provides connectivity to USB2 and Firewire? Thats great if that is the case.

Thanks.

[Lateralus]

Originally posted by kg109:
So this enclosure basically just houses a hard drive, and provides connectivity to USB2 and Firewire? Thats great if that is the case.

Correct.

If you are going to get one, I would suggest this enclosure. $32.99, and free shipping via FedEx. Nice thing is that it will hold 3.5" and 5.25" drives, so once you're done using it for your file transfer you could use it for an optical drive since the G5 will only hold one. A faster CD burner perhaps?

You could also do the transfer via ethernet, but you would need crossover cable to connect the two machines if you don't already have any. I can't give you much advice on how to set the process up between OS X and XP since I have never done it myself.

And the final option, which I had heard works, would be to hook your G5 to your PC via a FireWire cable (If your PC has FireWire) and then restart the G5 while holding down the 'T' key, which should make the PC see your G5's hard drives as FireWire drives. From there you should be able to just drag and drop your files via My Computer. I had thought this little trick was something that was for Macs only, but have been told the it can be done as I just described using a PC as well.

[kg109]

"A Faster burning CD burner perhaps?"

No kidding - another great suggestion.

Thanks for all the info - I'll probably buy one that has USB and Firewire, since I have a ton of info to transfer, the faster the better. I found one on NewEgg for $39 or so.

[kg109]

I've been looking around at enclosures, and have another question: CUSA has one that is USB2 and one that is Firewire (and one that is both).

They claim the USB2 drive has a rate of 480Mbps, and the Firewire drive has a rate of 400Mbps. I thought Firewire was supposed to be FASTER than USB? If the USB drive is faster, I'll save my $20 and run that.

Originally posted by PowerMacMan:
Correct.

If you are going to get one, I would suggest this enclosure. $32.99, and free shipping via FedEx. Nice thing is that it will hold 3.5" and 5.25" drives, so once you're done using it for your file transfer you could use it for an optical drive since the G5 will only hold one. A faster CD burner perhaps?

You could also do the transfer via ethernet, but you would need crossover cable to connect the two machines if you don't already have any. I can't give you much advice on how to set the process up between OS X and XP since I have never done it myself.

And the final option, which I had heard works, would be to hook your G5 to your PC via a FireWire cable (If your PC has FireWire) and then restart the G5 while holding down the 'T' key, which should make the PC see your G5's hard drives as FireWire drives. From there you should be able to just drag and drop your files via My Computer. I had thought this little trick was something that was for Macs only, but have been told the it can be done as I just described using a PC as well.

[kupan787]

Actually, if you are just going to be copying the data off the drive, and not using it regularly after that, you could hook it to the IDE cable connected to the DVD drive in your G5. That is just your standard ATA cable, and will hook up to your PC drive fine, and wont cost you anything.

However, if you want to use the drive with your G5, then an external case is proabbly the way to go.

[kg109]

Bingo - Yeah that is what I *thought*, but wasn't sure if the Mac interface was different. Thats all I need to do: temporarily connect the drive, copy the data over and throw it back in the PC.

Thanks.

[kg109]

I tried removing the optical drive, and plugged the PC hard drive right in place. No go. I tried changing the jumper cables from Cable Select - Slave - Master and nothing worked. I'd get a message to the effect of: "Mac OSX has detected a disk it can not read"

So I'm back to buying the external enclosure?

Which brings me to another question:

I've been looking around at enclosures: CUSA has one that is USB2 and one that is Firewire (and one that is both).

They claim the USB2 drive has a rate of 480Mbps, and the Firewire drive has a rate of 400Mbps. I thought Firewire was supposed to be FASTER than USB? If the USB drive is faster, I'll save my $20 and run that.

[reader50]

FireWire 400 is somewhat faster than USB2 in real-world tests because of differences in bus architecture - FireWire has less overhead lost to control signals, waiting on CPU to respond, etc. The speed difference is not a huge one, and most cheap drives will not max out either bus.

If the drive will not mount via direct connection, it most likely cannot mount via an external case either. What file system is on the PC hard drive?

An ethernet crossover cable can be gotten for less than $10. Start network sharing, drag the entire PC HD contents to the G5's HD, and let it copy overnight or something. If you can lay hands on an iPod, that will work for shuttling data across too.

[kupan787]

Originally posted by reader50:
If the drive will not mount via direct connection, it most likely cannot mount via an external case either. What file system is on the PC hard drive?

Exactly what I was going to say. I know that this method works for at least HFS+ formatted drives. It should work for a PC formatted drive, I don't see why not. I know MacOS X can read FAT32, but I am not sure if it can read NTFS. There appears to be a "beta" driver over at http://sourceforge.net/projects/ntfsosx/

[kg109]

reader 50:
The PC drive as NTFS - so yeah thats probably my problem. But I never foresaw this issue, and never thought anything of it.

So if I have an ethernet card in both machines, I can just directly connect both machines to eachother? Why can't you just use a regular CAT5 - how does a "crossover cable" differ?

So I at least have a few options - this is critical as I am going to be working from home from here on out, hopefully starting Monday - so I need to get the data transferred over. I guess last resort, I can burn DVDs.

kupan787:
I may also check into that driver - that'd be great to be able to just connect the *&#* drive and copy data over. Thank you.

[jaysones]

Originally posted by kg109:
reader 50:
The PC drive as NTFS - so yeah thats probably my problem. But I never foresaw this issue, and never thought anything of it.

So if I have an ethernet card in both machines, I can just directly connect both machines to eachother? Why can't you just use a regular CAT5 - how does a "crossover cable" differ?

So I at least have a few options - this is critical as I am going to be working from home from here on out, hopefully starting Monday - so I need to get the data transferred over. I guess last resort, I can burn DVDs.

kupan787:
I may also check into that driver - that'd be great to be able to just connect the *&#* drive and copy data over. Thank you.

Wait, Panther, the OS on your G5, can read NTFS, but not write to it, as I just learned from this experiment. I put an NTFS drive in my G4 and it mounted fine. You could get this error at startup if it's trying to write .dsstore files or index files or something. I suspect you can get this to work on the internal bus, if you're just copying. I think there's something happening here that's stopping your progress that can be fixed. Sorry I can't be more helpful right away, but I know you can read and copy from NTFS drives internally, because I just did it.

[kg109]

Then I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, if Panther CAN read an NTFS drive. I just removed the DVD drive and plugged in the PC hard drive - simple. I swapped around the jumper settings thinking that may be it, but nope. I still got the error message at startup, and the drive did not appear.

[jaysones]

Hmm. Have you got more than one partition on the drive? If you get an error at startup, try clicking "ignore," then going to Disk Utility and see if you can mount your data partition that way.

[kupan787]

I am about 90% sure Panther can NOT read NTFS by default. I recently plugged in a firewire NTFS hard drive into my mac, and it didn't show up. But that link I posted to the NTFS driver will allow you to read NTFS drivers (not write to them). Perhaps, jaysones, you installed that?

[kg109]

This has been a total nightmare. I brought both of the hard drives from work, home this weekend, since I'll be working from my home office from here on out. But not if I can't get the files copied to my G5, like I explained earlier.

First off, the Mac isn't seeing the drive. Hell, even my PC couldn't see it for some reason (I had to mount the drive on the wife's "Emachine")

I have pretty much tried everything - from the NTFS driver that was suggested (didn't work by the way), to connecting the computers on the network (the G5 could "see" my PC, but could not see any of the files).

The Disk Utility could see the PC drive, but I could not access it, unless there's something I need to do otherwise (although I always got the "red flagged" message at startup about MacOSX seeing a drive it can't read.

I'm at Plan F (use your imagination) which is burning CD after CD, which will work, but isn't the way I wanted to do it. Its only 33 GB of data, but thats still a lot of CDs.

I have a headache. Thanks for all the help.

[reader50]

If you have a spare HD, format it as FAT32 on the PC side and copy your files to it. OSX definitely reads/writes FAT32.

An ethernet crossover cable reverses the signal wires so the cable is suitable for connecting two computers directly to each other - as opposed to connecting each to a common hub/switch. Starting with the Ti PowerBook, Apple introduced an autosensing ethernet port which does not require a crossover cable - a regular cable will work fine. I'd assume this feature has made it's way to the towers by now, but I don't have a G5 to test with.

I'm not a windows expert, but on the Mac side, you have to share folders before they can be seen or accessed from the network side - this is a basic security precaution. Perhaps you need only turn on sharing, and enable it for your data folders on the PC side?

Further suggestions. Turn on File Sharing on your G5 while connected to the network. The controls are in System Preferences -> Sharing. If the PC can see any folder on the G5, copy all your files to that folder. If "Windows File Sharing" doesn't do the trick, use "Personal File Sharing".

Alternative: turn on FTP Access on your G5. Use any FTP utility on the PC side to upload everything.

[kg109]

Originally posted by reader50:
If you have a spare HD, format it as FAT32 on the PC side and copy your files to it. OSX definitely reads/writes FAT32.

Yeah I thought of that - I will try it - I have an extra 20GB laying around and I'll see if I can format it FAT32 and run it.

An ethernet crossover cable reverses the signal wires so the cable is suitable for connecting two computers directly to each other - as opposed to connecting each to a common hub/switch. Starting with the Ti PowerBook, Apple introduced an autosensing ethernet port which does not require a crossover cable - a regular cable will work fine. I'd assume this feature has made it's way to the towers by now, but I don't have a G5 to test with.

I'm not a windows expert, but on the Mac side, you have to share folders before they can be seen or accessed from the network side - this is a basic security precaution. Perhaps you need only turn on sharing, and enable it for your data folders on the PC side?

I connected the PC to the Mac via a plain-ol CAT5 cable. My Mac can "see" the PC, and I DO have the folders in Win2000 set to "share", but no dice. I'm assuming the feature you speak of, IS in the G5, but something else must be wrong on my side. And I bet its the issue that my G5 just can't read NTFS. So close, but so far away!

Further suggestions. Turn on File Sharing on your G5 while connected to the network. The controls are in System Preferences -> Sharing. If the PC can see any folder on the G5, copy all your files to that folder. If "Windows File Sharing" doesn't do the trick, use "Personal File Sharing".

Alternative: turn on FTP Access on your G5. Use any FTP utility on the PC side to upload everything.

I have the File Sharing set correctly I believe.

So bottom line: I'll FTP the small stuff, and try to format my spare HD as FAT32 and see what happens.

I really appreciate all the time you've spent with the suggestions. Thank you.

[kg109]

Solution: I ended up finding an old 20GB drive that I had in my box-of-parts - 'had to format that FAT32, and bingo.

Back to work. Thanks.

[jaysones]

Panther actually does natively support NTFS as read-only. Apple's article about PC migration mentions it, although in a very cryptically worded paragraph. I have no idea why this wouldn't work for you, as it did for me. I never installed that driver, though I had read about it. I suppose this is too late to help you, but if anyone else comes here looking for an answer to this: I think your best bet would haver been to call Apple support, since this is apparently a documented feature of Panther, and (I assume it's new enough that) you've still got AppleCare for your G5.

[bradoesch]

Originally posted by reader50:


An ethernet crossover cable reverses the signal wires so the cable is suitable for connecting two computers directly to each other - as opposed to connecting each to a common hub/switch. Starting with the Ti PowerBook, Apple introduced an autosensing ethernet port which does not require a crossover cable - a regular cable will work fine. I'd assume this feature has made it's way to the towers by now, but I don't have a G5 to test with.

This tidbit from Apple shows which computers require crossover cables.

[fizzlemynizzle]

I connected an NTFS formatted IDE hard drive to my powerbook (via a firewire enclosure) with no problem. Read only access but that was all I needed extract my data.