[pic9809]

i am thinking of getting a portable firewire HD to backup important data on my PB. i'd also like to use it to transfer files btwn home and work. however, i am stuck using a PC at work. My questions are as follows:

1. is it possible to use the same firewire HD on both my PB and PC?

2. do i need to partition the drive to be able to do this? if so, should this be done from the PB or PC? how do i go about doing this?

3. will i be able to use it to transfer files from my PB to PC and vice versa?

many thx in advance

[dcsmrgun]

If you format the volume as FAT32, you will be able to use it on both your Mac and your PC.

I would recommend formatting it on your PC, as FAT32 has a volume size limit (25 or 30gb i think), after which Windows will be unable to recognize the volume.

So in essence, a 120GB firewire drive you'd have to split up into 4 24gb partitions, and one 20gb partition. PITA if you ask me

[bracken]

MacDrive works well for reading/writing HFS+ volumes. It's not free though (like dcsmrgun's solution is). (FAT32 has a 32GB limit.)

[vvedge]

Is Fat32 readable and writeable by both PC and Mac? I know my dad accidently plugged in a PC hard drive into his firewire case. It loaded, but it wouldn't write any changes to the hard drive.

[dcsmrgun]

Fat32 is read/writeable from both OSX and Win32. I use this all the time to move files between our PC and Windows AVID machines. I think NTFS is readable by OSX but yo can't write.

[slider]

If your only going to be using this drive between the one computer at work, but most ellagent solution is MacDrive, if your jumping from PC to PC, then FAT 32 is the way to go, but FAT 32 is a slower format on both the Mac and NTFS which is used on Win2000, XP, and I believe 98.

[Eug]

Some comments, in no particular order.

1) MacDrive works the best.

2) FAT32 does NOT have a 32 GB limit. You just can't format a partition over 32 GB in XP. However, you can in Win 98 or with a 3rd party program.

3) FAT32 is sometimes flaky with OS X, and doesn't support the same filenames as HFS+ does. ie. With certain files/directories with unsupported characters, they can't be transferred unless you change the filename.

4) OS X does not support NTFS, even for reads.

5) FAT32 is faster than NTFS on a PC, but is slower than HFS+ on a Mac.

6) MacDrive works the best.

7) MacDrive works the best.

[slider]

Originally posted by Eug:

5) FAT32 is faster than NTFS on a PC, but is slower than HFS+ on a Mac.

Nice, I did not know that, thanks.

[bradoesch]

If you want more information, do a quick search and you should pick up a lot of threads on this exact topic.