possible to use same external HD on Mac and PC?

[thomsbrain]

I've got a USB 2.0 enclosure with an 80 GB Maxtor in it. Is it possible to use this drive on both a Mac and a PC? (I'd mostly want to use it to rescue some files from a Mac). How should I partition and/or format this drive? I'm guessing Macs can't read NTFS, but can they read FAT32? Do I just have to leave a partition open for the Mac to use?

Edit: PC is running Windows 2000. I assume the Mac is running some version of OS 9 (It's a G4 but doesn't have OS X).

 

[Dahak]

Well accoding to this article Here you can an extrernal harddrive that is formatted in either fat/fat32 but NOT ntfs

Hope that helps

 

[metalmania]

I use a software called "Conversion Plus" in Windows2000, and format my external USB disk to Mac format, so I can transfer files between my PC and Mac.

 

[ViRGE]

A FAT32 volume will work fine, but it will screw up resource forks on certain Mac files, so you might not want to use it if you're using it to move program files.

 

[thomsbrain]

it will just be data files, so sounds like formatting in FAT32 is the way to go (which is what i did already, so luckily i don't have to do it again). i noticed the disk would only format in >36GB partitions, even though I have huge disks on the system. Must be a limitation of FAT32 in USB form, or just the built-in Windows driver for USB disks.

 

[Dahak]

Actually microsoft limites formatting drive over 30gb in windows 2000 and xp to ntfs. what you could do is format it on an 98 machine or uses a 3rd party partitioning software

 

[Mday]

Originally posted by: Dahak
Actually microsoft limites formatting drive over 30gb in windows 2000 and xp to ntfs. what you could do is format it on an 98 machine or uses a 3rd party partitioning software

yup, i formatted my 120GB external HDDs in win98se cuz of that problem, speed ++

anyway, it's easier to have the drive in fat32 formatted with windows for a mac\pc, than a mac formatting a drive for use with both

 

[Eug]

FAT32 on a Mac with OS X is a bit flaky, and as ViRGE said, there are some other issues as well. IIRC, FAT32 is better on an OS 9 machine, but I never use OS 9 so I can't really say. (I HATE OS 9.)

The best solution is running MacDrive on the PC. It will make a Windows PC read HFS+ format drives, and HFS+ is the native format of Macs. I do this so that my PC can read my Mac iPod, and another external hard drive.

The only problem is that you have to have MacDrive installed on every PC you want to use the HFS+ hard drive with.

 

[ViRGE]

FAT32 is flakey? I've never had an issue in 2 years myself.

 

[gsaldivar]

You can mount a Mac-formatted hard disk in Windows using this...