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Tyler McAdams · Mar 30, 2003, 08:25 PM

I've got a PC and a couple Macs... I'd like to be able to manually swap files back an forth using my firewire drive... Both my PC and my Mac have firewire ports... currently, the drive I want to use is HFS+ partitioned... but when I attach it to my PC it does not see the drive unless I go in to partiton magic, where it simply sees the drive as an unallocated partition... what format(s) will I be able to use so that both my mac and my pc can see this drive? NTFS? FAT32?

Coxy · Mar 30, 2003, 08:30 PM

IIRC, Mac OS X can mount and write to FAT32 drives.

Tyler McAdams · Mar 30, 2003, 09:07 PM

Originally posted by Coxy:
IIRC, Mac OS X can mount and write to FAT32 drives.

Ok... what about ntfs? The files I'm going to be getting might be over 4gigs... will it be trouble?

Gul Banana · Mar 30, 2003, 09:41 PM

If you use FAT32, it will be - it can't handle over 4 gig files.

King Bob On The Cob · Mar 30, 2003, 10:02 PM

Originally posted by Gul Banana:
If you use FAT32, it will be - it can't handle over 4 gig files.

Your screwed my friend. or you could get a HSF reader on windows such as MacDisk

Tyler McAdams · Mar 30, 2003, 11:44 PM

Originally posted by King Bob On The Cob:
Your screwed my friend. or you could get a HSF reader on windows such as MacDisk

I just don't get it... 2000 sees my samba shares on HFS+ just fine.. but when I need to actually connect a drive I get this! It seems so paradoxical. Not to mention I can get my OS X box to see my windows boxes but the Windows box sees the samba shares... shouldn't I be able to see my windows box from my mac too?

Just what does samba do that makes a windows box understand the hfs+ drives that mounting one regularly won't?

Thinine · Mar 30, 2003, 11:57 PM

In my experience, it's easier to share a PC formatted disk from a PC and read it on a Mac than vice versa. And you might try the IP address for connecting to the PC rather than the Windows name. See macosxhints.com for a good AppleScript.

Scarpa · 01:17 AM

FAT32 can support more than 4GB. If OS X can read it, which I didn't know it did, then you should use that format. NTFS only offers security over FAT32.

EDIT: I didn't realize you were talking about 4GB files. That's more annoying to deal with..

Scarpa · Mar 31, 2003, 01:15 AM

Originally posted by Tyler McAdams:
Just what does samba do that makes a windows box understand the hfs+ drives that mounting one regularly won't?

Samba uses a filesharing protocol. There is another layer of abstraction (network filesharing support) from the filesystem when using Samba to share a volume.

Using Firewire to mount the drive is different because the OS is interfacing directly with the drive.

Tyler McAdams · Mar 31, 2003, 01:41 AM

Originally posted by Scarpa:
Samba uses a filesharing protocol. There is another layer of abstraction (network filesharing support) from the filesystem when using Samba to share a volume.

Using Firewire to mount the drive is different because the OS is interfacing directly with the drive.

I need to get this straight... bare with me people... ok samba is a networking protocol that is used on unix-y systems so windows boxes can connect and share files just as if it was a windows server... unix-y boxes can have different file systems... xfs, hfs+...etc... through the samba protocol the windows box sees the files on the other box... right? So the file system does not seem to matter as long as your connecting with samba? But firewire shows the device but the filesystem and the files are nonsense not to mention unreadable (in hfs+)... Is the os x version of samba different in that it takes in to account that the file system is hfs+ and uses some protocol to read from it... which would mean that you would have different types of samba depending on the host and the host filesystem... because you would need a samba that is compatible with the file system... or what is it that suddenly makes hfs+ drives readable through samba but not firewire protocol? There's obviously some code that makes directories readable... is that part of the macs file sharing infrastructure or part of samba? or is it all simply somehow object-able like a jpeg is on any file system? something's screwy here... So basically if firewire had some sort of implementation of this "network filesharing support" added to it the hfs+ file system would not then matter... right? so it's all about this network filesharing support?

Coxy · Mar 31, 2003, 07:32 AM

It's not that hard to understand.

When you connect to a fileserver, the computer on the other end is sending you directory and file information in a standard format, no matter what file system the disk is actually formatted in.

This is completely different to actually plugging the HDD into the computer and trying to access it directly.

It does look like purchasing one of the commercial HFS+ drive mounters for Windows will be your best bet.

someone_else · Mar 31, 2003, 11:41 AM

Probably doesn't help, but if you were using Linux instead of WinBlows on your PC, you could format your Firewire drive as Ext2 (Linux FS). There is now software out for Mac OS X that allows it to read/write Ext2 formatted disks.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsx/

As others have mentioned, Samba works because it abstracts all local filesystems (no matter what format) for use over a network. When you physically attach a disk to your machine, then the network (and hence Samba) is not in the picture, so your OS needs to have specific code to read the fileystem on that disk.

Mediaman_12 · Mar 31, 2003, 02:16 PM

My solution would be to put MacDrive on the PC. and use HFS+ as the drive format. I use it at work to read Mac format CD's, it works flawlessly.