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|| SportsShooter.com: Member Message Board
Help! I don't know enough! tech question...
Ben Burgeson, Student/Intern, Photographer
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Vista | CA | USA | Posted: 5:14 PM on 04.01.07 |
->> I have LaCie d2 Hard Drive Extreme with Triple interface. I have a powerbook G4 from which I operate this external hard drive. I also have a PC with a very large hard drive that I hardly use. I would like to use the PC as a back up to my LaCie drive, and have an emergency version of photo mechanic on it. My trouble is dropping my info from the LaCie to the PC. The PC will not "see" the drive.
What I've done:
plugged the LaCie into the PC
tried to find drivers |
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Bastian Ehl, Photographer
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Magdeburg | _ | Germany | Posted: 5:24 PM on 04.01.07 |
->> Did you format your drive with the Mac file system? I guess so.
Check MacDrive - the tool allows you to read any mac formatted drive on a windows pc. |
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Stew Milne, Photographer
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Providence | RI | USA | Posted: 5:28 PM on 04.01.07 |
->> I'm pretty sure you can't switch back and forth between hooking your external HD up to a Mac then PC. They have to be formatted to one or the other OS, not both. I could be wrong, but that's what I've read about my Lacie HD.
-sM |
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Bastian Ehl, Photographer
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Magdeburg | _ | Germany | Posted: 5:38 PM on 04.01.07 |
->> MacDrive is the solution for exactly this situation.
Some friends of mine have a film production company with a mixed mac and windows working environment. the exchange their external harddisks (all mac formatted) using MacDrive on the windows machines. |
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Ben Burgeson, Student/Intern, Photographer
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Vista | CA | USA | Posted: 5:39 PM on 04.01.07 |
->> Ok, I've downloaded the trial version. If it works then I will buy it! Thanks for the heads up boys!
I'll check back if it works out |
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Delane B. Rouse, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Washington | DC | US | Posted: 5:51 PM on 04.01.07 |
->> Ben0
I have the exact same drive and it works flawlessly with my Mac and PeeCee with no additional hardware.
You DO have to format it properly to be able to read/write both OS's and I cant remember which format it is...but I can confirm with 100% confidence that mine works on OSX and Windows XP.
In fact, it's Sunday and time for my weekly back-ups from BOTH machines!!!
FYI: LaCie has an excellent web support section with FAQs for MAC and PeeCee...give it a shot:
http://www.lacie.com/us/support/
Delane |
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Frank Niemeir, Photographer
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Woodstock | GA | usa | Posted: 6:28 PM on 04.01.07 |
->> My thought is that you may have a firewall running on your PC that is hiding it from the Mac being able to see it. Check your parameters or shut the firewall off when moving files back and forth.
I don't think formatting is the issue.
Frank |
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Marie Hughes, Photographer
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Fremont | CA | USA | Posted: 7:21 PM on 04.01.07 |
->> I'm sure formating is the issue. If you format a drive for MacOS, the PC will not "see" it. It acts like it isn't there (vs. being able to see it but not read it, which is what you'd expect).
I've had PC people tell me when I tried to hook a drive up to their PC (that I though was formated properly, but wasn't) that "obviously" there was something wrong with my drive and the drive was trash. Then I'd go home, reformat the drive using "MS-DOS File System" instead of " Mac OS Extended", bring it back and hook it up to the same PC and have it work flawlessly.
Since I work in a mixed environment, I now format everything as MS-DOS even if I think it will never be hooked to a PC. The downside to that is that Mac OS allows a lot more special characters in the filename than Windows does so when I copy files from my Mac onto a PC formated drive, sometimes they won't copy. I've learned to use very vanilla filenames to avoid this problem. |
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Marc Browning, Photographer
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Wichita | KS | | Posted: 7:54 PM on 04.01.07 |
->> i used to do the same thing. All you have to do is format the frive as FAT 32.
But do format it on the mac, the mac will let you format it as one large parittion. the PC won't. I have 7 out of 8 external drives like this. |
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Ben Burgeson, Student/Intern, Photographer
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Vista | CA | USA | Posted: 1:17 AM on 04.02.07 |
->> Ok, so after a couple of hours I figured it out. DO NOT FORMAT! I bought the MacDrive sftwr and it worked great. I am currently transfering, will be for the next four years, since i don't have a firewire port on my PC. Slowly but sure enough. Again thanks for the heads up!
some kid |
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Bastian Ehl, Photographer
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Magdeburg | _ | Germany | Posted: 4:16 AM on 04.02.07 |
->> For clarification, due there's some false knowlegde floating around in this thread:
There are currently three file systems commonly used with Windows PC and Mac
Windows XP or newer:
NTFS
Fat32 (called MS-Dos on a mac)
Mac OS X:
MAcOS extended
Fat32 (called MS-Dos on mac)
Windows can read and write NTFS and Fat32 only, no MacOS extended formatted disks. With the software MacDrive you can read and write those devices.
MacOS X can read but NOT write NTFS drives, can read and write fat32 and MacOS extended drives.
Fat32 seems the perfect solution for a mixed working environment. Still, due it's quite old, it only accepts single file sizes of up to 4GB. That shouldn't be an issue when working with photos. Video files are easily bigger than those 4GB.
Further information
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat32
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ntfs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_Extended |
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Jay Reiter, Photographer
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Newmarket | NH | USA | Posted: 6:23 AM on 04.02.07 |
->> Bastian is right ontarget. If you're working on or have access to a Mac, when you get a new harddrive, format it to MS-DOS. You can then transfer your files to it and it will be read by either platform.
You won't need any additional software. |
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David Meyer, Photographer
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Orlando | FL | USA | Posted: 11:22 AM on 04.03.07 |
| ->> Note that, in addition to the 4GB file size limit with FAT32, there is also a 32GB partition size limit. |
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Dirk Dewachter, Photographer
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Playa Del Rey | CA | USA | Posted: 12:06 PM on 04.03.07 |
->> It is for the reasons outline by Bastian that I format my drives that I use on both systems as Fat32 and that works well for swapping harddrives in my storage system. For all my video work file storage, I format my drives for the Mac only for video storage.
I use a dos program on the PC side to format new hard drives in Fat32 before using on the mixed Mac/PC network. You can find the dos version at http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32format.htm |
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Max Simbron, Photographer, Assistant
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Phoenix | AZ | USA | Posted: 12:31 PM on 04.03.07 |
->> David, the 32GB partition limit for FAT 32 is incorrect. In fact, the limit was.. I believe, 132 Gigs, and it was an LBA addressing issue, but that's since been resolved.
For compatibility between Mac and PC, just use FAT332. As long as it's for external drives, the speed differences between FAT32 and NTFS won't amount to a lot of lost time. On an OS drive though, I would use NTFS on Windows, and MacOS Extended on a mac. |
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Greg Ferguson, Photographer
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Scottsdale | Az | USA | Posted: 4:14 PM on 04.03.07 |
->> I'd look into using one of the machines as a server and then copy files across your network. If you don't have a network (hard to believe these days) then get a cheap four or five port switch and build one.
There's a lot of simple backup solutions that make it easy to sync two drives, and with a network connection you can automate them so the sync will happen in the wee hours of the morning. |
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