[zenloof]

I just built a new (PC) rig and need to put the files from my powerbook on the desktop hard drive. I'm trying to use my friend's external hard drive. I connect it to my powerbook and it shows up as "Storage" on my desktop. I can read the files on the hard drive but I cannot write to it (while he can using his thinkpad). It says "Storage cannot be modified."

what's going wrong?

[B Gallagher]

What tyoe of file format does the HDD use?

[mountainash]

Probably, your friend's external hard drive is formatted as NTFS (this is the default file system on Windows NT, 2000, and XP). OSX can only read NTFS and not write to it. OS X can write to FAT-32 (the old standard in PC world), but FAT-32 is less effecient on large disks and has a file size limit of 4GB (you can't have any single file larger than 4GB). This can be problematic if you have to deal with media files, like Digital Video, which might be larger than 4GB.

There are other possibilities, but this is the most likely. To find out what file system (format) the disk is, click on it in finder and then select 'get info' from the file menu (option-i). Next to "Format:" it will tell you whether the disk is NTFS or FAT-32 (or HFS+ or whatever). You can also access this info from 'Disk Utility'.

[mountainash]

I should have mentioned, you can get third party tools to read HFS+ formatted hard drives on PC. MacDrive, TransMac and MacOpener. I think MacDrive is the best of the three.
You can also get tools to read UFS (Unix File System), which is the other format OSX can use.

[DevNine]

I understand ntfs is read only under Mac Os X but why ? How come I can read but not write? How come I can read and write with fat32? Was ntfs reverse engineered ?

[tooki]

Because NTFS is a closed format and Microsoft has never released the write specifications, and NTFS has proven to be too complex to allow a reverse-engineered write driver to work reliably. (There is one open-source one, but NTFS writing is considered to be "experimental" only and has been known to cause severe corruption.) The reverse-engineered read-only open source drivers that Linux and Mac OS X use are entirely reliable for reading, though.

tooki

[mduell]

Sysinternals found a way for full NTFS read/write support in Win9x/DOS... I wonder if they'll port to OSX now that it's running on x86 instead of PPC.

[threestain]

I've got a question...

When my mac sleeps, my hard drive doesn't, and then won't re-mount when I wake the mac. It spins down, but when I open finder (or look at the drive somehow) it spins up and freezes the finder and then I have to turn off the HDD to get rid of the crash. This then gives me a not removed properly pop-up. Is there anything I can do?

[tooki]

Don't ask new, unrelated questions in existing threads. Start a new one, using a CLEAR thread title summarizing your question.

tooki

[tooki]

Originally Posted by mduell

Sysinternals found a way for full NTFS read/write support in Win9x/DOS... I wonder if they'll port to OSX now that it's running on x86 instead of PPC.

Unless that extension were from Microsoft, which it isn't, I'd stay away with a 10 foot pole.

As I said, MS has not released the information needed to write NTFS read-write drivers, so all unlicensed NTFS drivers are reverse-engineered. This has proven to be very problematic with writing, with relatively frequent reports of corruption.

There's no sense in porting a driver from DOS to Mac OS X (a major untertaking, since none of the code would be usable!) when a read-write driver already exists for Linux and could be (and, AFAIK, has been) compiled for Mac OS X. But either way, the extreme unreliability of a reverse-engineered NTFS driver remains.

tooki

[threestain]

Originally Posted by tooki

Don't ask new, unrelated questions in existing threads. Start a new one, using a CLEAR thread title summarizing your question.

tooki

Sorry, thought there a plausible gap in the conversation, and hate starting new threads (people look at me funny). will do though now.

[MrForgetable]

What about the other way around? (PC to Mac)

Currently I have a WD external harddrive, and I would like to upload two miniDV movies (~9GB and 18GB) onto the external harddrive onto my Powerbook from a laptop that runs Windows XP. Currently, the external harddrive is formatted as "MS-DOS File System (FAT32)."

If I only want to read the files (and transfer them onto my computer) and not write onto the drive, I should reformat the drive to NTFS on the Windows XP laptop as FAT32 is limited to 4GB per file and both movies are over that correct?

This is what I have planned to do:
1. Format the drive to NTFS on XP and upload the two videos onto the external drive
2. Plug the drive into my Powerbook, and drag and drop the two files onto the Desktop
3. Format the drive to the native Mac format (whatever that may be) and start editing the videos in iMovie/FCP and make the external drive the scratch disk (or would that be too slow?)

Thanks for the help!

[mduell]

Yes.