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Mac/PC HD Compatibility Questions
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Jason



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PostPosted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 6:40 pm    Post subject: Mac/PC HD Compatibility Questions Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I am looking for some kind of chart showing do's & dont's for Mac & PC
Hard Drive formatting.

Example would be NTFS formatted works on Mac ok read/write
(which I dont think is even true, but just an example)

Basically, my main question is there a good universal formatting option for Hard Drives to allow them to be compatible with both Mac and PC platforms in a read/write state?

I have struggled with this for years especially at work, but this would be great information. Any ideas or tips are most welcome.

Thanks,
Jason
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cappy2112



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PostPosted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 7:42 pm    Post subject: Re: Mac/PC HD Compatibility Questions Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Jason wrote:
I am looking for some kind of chart showing do's & dont's for Mac & PC
Hard Drive formatting.

Example would be NTFS formatted works on Mac ok read/write
(which I dont think is even true, but just an example)

Basically, my main question is there a good universal formatting option for Hard Drives to allow them to be compatible with both Mac and PC platforms in a read/write state?

I have struggled with this for years especially at work, but this would be great information. Any ideas or tips are most welcome.

Thanks,
Jason


I know that is an example, but years ago when I was using Linux regularly, there was a way to mount ntfs partitions in read-only mode.
I wouldn't be surprised if there is a way to write them from Linux & its cousins.

Type

man mount

the -t option lets you specify the type of partition
One of those types is ntfs - but it may still be read-only

Just remembered something: I have a hackers boot cd that has all kinds of "tools" on it, all organized into nice menus.

One of those tools let me reset the login password on my xp system, so I guess there are (probably limited) write capabilities for ntfs as well.
It was surprisingly easy (and not surprisingly easy at the same time) too.
Less than 3 minutes (and most of that was booting & searching thru the menus), with no prior knowledge of NT/XP system stuff.

Afterthought; Take a look at Samba. It lets you expose partitions that can be read/written to over the network by Windoze (et al)
machines.

You can also control shares other than partitions, like printers, but I've only used it for hard drive partitions.

Once they are on the network, the guy the other end can access them, and doesn't know (nor does he need to know) what kind of box is hosting the storage.

This isn't exactly what you're looking for but may be somewhat valuable.

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elektro80
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 9:17 pm    Post subject: Re: Mac/PC HD Compatibility Questions Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Jason wrote:
I am looking for some kind of chart showing do's & dont's for Mac & PC
Hard Drive formatting.

Example would be NTFS formatted works on Mac ok read/write
(which I dont think is even true, but just an example)

Basically, my main question is there a good universal formatting option for Hard Drives to allow them to be compatible with both Mac and PC platforms in a read/write state?

I have struggled with this for years especially at work, but this would be great information. Any ideas or tips are most welcome.

Thanks,
Jason





OS X can read both NTFS and FAT32, but AFAIK of those two filesystems, it can currently only write to FAT32.
However, you can also use filesharing.

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Jason



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PostPosted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 9:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Thank you elektro80, this is very helpful.
Thank you as well cappy, but I need to know this primarily for removeable storage devices for Apple and MS.
In most cases I need these local and not on the network but very good to know. Cool
J
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cappy2112



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PostPosted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 10:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Jason wrote:
Thank you elektro80, this is very helpful.
Thank you as well cappy, but I need to know this primarily for removeable storage devices for Apple and MS.
In most cases I need these local and not on the network but very good to know. Cool
J


Well, the simplest, not necessarily robust is FAT32. If you use the autmount
option for the mount command, it will likely detect it without problems.

Another potential option is an ISO partition. I'm sure Linux & Mac can write them easily. Windows may not be able to read it natively, but WinRar, WinISO and WinZip can r/w them.

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Jason



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PostPosted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 10:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Yes I'm looking for that 3rd solution that may not exist yet>?
Getting in a time machine to use fat32 is what we have been doing.
I indeed will search online some more, I have done a little, but I thought someone here may have some tips too. This is still very helpful, thanks again.
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cappy2112



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PostPosted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 11:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Jason wrote:
Yes I'm looking for that 3rd solution that may not exist yet>?
Getting in a time machine to use fat32 is what we have been doing.
I indeed will search online some more, I have done a little, but I thought someone here may have some tips too. This is still very helpful, thanks again.


See if there are forums on Mac.com

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Kassen
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 4:10 am    Post subject: Re: Mac/PC HD Compatibility Questions Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

cappy2112 wrote:

I know that is an example, but years ago when I was using Linux regularly, there was a way to mount ntfs partitions in read-only mode.
I wouldn't be surprised if there is a way to write them from Linux & its cousins.


I'm fairly sure Ubuntu can read&write NTFS and FAT32 both these days.

For audio work I see no point in using NTFS at all as FAT is faster for throughput so that includes streaming recordings from the HD to your DAW or loading sample libraries, etc.

I once saw a Linux-based data recovery system that could read from *anything* and that was homebrew and years ago so I'm sure there are more proper solutions now.

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PostPosted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 7:35 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Hi Jason!

Elektro has beaten me to it- but he's spot on (of course! Very Happy )

Basically it's like this;

1 x HD?

3 x partitions.

1 x HFS+

1 x FAT32

1 x NTFS

Simple.

OS X will read but won't write from NTFS (that's my experience)

Windows XP just doesn't give a shit, and will just see HFS+ as something else to write over (ie it doesn't recognise it at all).

Both with read and write to FAT32- which is useful if you want both OS's to share the same iTunes folder (or Audio etc) on the same drive.

I'm also not totally convinced with disk performance while running both OS's simultaneously. XP really seems to slow the computer down.

I hope that helps as an Nth experience Smile

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Jason



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PostPosted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 8:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

wow, thanks everyone, I will review this when I have some more time.
So tired now. Laughing didnt get sleep as I started reading a huge thread here.
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cappy2112



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PostPosted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 10:22 am    Post subject: Re: Mac/PC HD Compatibility Questions Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

[quote="Kassen"]
cappy2112 wrote:

I know that is an example, but years ago when I was using Linux regularly, t
For audio work I see no point in using NTFS at all as FAT is faster for throughput so that includes streaming recordings from the HD to your DAW


FAT? Perhaps you mean FAT32?
Capacity limitations would be the first issue with FAT.

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Kassen
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 10:36 am    Post subject: Re: Mac/PC HD Compatibility Questions Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

cappy2112 wrote:

FAT? Perhaps you mean FAT32?
Capacity limitations would be the first issue with FAT.


Absolutely, I didn't say FAT32 was perfect or didn't have downsides, but it's faster than NTFS and more compatible. Speed is a issue for music and compatibility is when we are talking about a OS for music so those are very real concerns, I think.

Secretly I also like the option of booting DOS from a floppy and fixing issues if all hell breaks loose but then there are modern DOS's that can read and write NTFS if need be.

Oh, and I think Windows and OSX are a bit primitive if they don't put a bit more effort into mounting eachother's filesystem. MS seems to think that's a sort of political matter. Woe-betide you HPFS (a IBM format) partition is Windows finds out about it....

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PostPosted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 10:45 am    Post subject: Re: Mac/PC HD Compatibility Questions Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Kassen wrote:

Secretly I also like the option of booting DOS from a floppy and


You said the F word. Not a good way to start a new year. Wink

Why not boot DOS from USB? It's lightning fast, and has a lot more room.
We do this in the test lab at work- load up the ramdisk, run the tests from the ramdisk, write logfiles to the USB drive. USB drives on systems with a GOOD bios can boot in just a few seconds.

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Kassen
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 11:13 am    Post subject: Re: Mac/PC HD Compatibility Questions Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

cappy2112 wrote:

You said the F word. Not a good way to start a new year. Wink


Why not? They are compatible. I can use them with my laptop, may desktop, my atari and two of my three samplers.

The last of the three uses QuickDisks.

*ducks*

*runs*

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Jason



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PostPosted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 7:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I may be wrong here but my preliminary research says
fat32 osX extended format may be the key to what we are needing for our mac/pc compatibility for removable storage devices
(mostly FW/USB drives).

Thanks for your help all!
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Jason



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PostPosted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 11:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Ok I was wrong.
What did work however for our needs is to format the drives on a mac using the ms-dos format option. This way the drives are both readable & writeable on both platforms as 1 partition etc. Under windows the drives show as a normal fat32 system.
Thanks
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BobTheDog



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PostPosted: Sun Jan 06, 2008 1:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Hi,

You can get osx to write to ntfs but its a bit of a pain and pretty slow.

You need to look at NTFS-3G and MacFuse.

http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/

http://www.ntfs-3g.org/

I did get all this working on my MacPro but it caused slow startups and shutdowns and in the end it just wasn't worth it. Of course it all may run a little better now as the version numbers seem to have come on a bit from when I tried it.

Cheers

Andy
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Kassen
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 06, 2008 6:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

BobTheDog wrote:

I did get all this working on my MacPro but it caused slow startups and shutdowns and in the end it just wasn't worth it.


That's odd, shouldn't that just be mounting and un-mounting?

Do you have disc-indexing turned on?

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PostPosted: Sun Jan 06, 2008 7:35 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

There were problems with mounting and unmounting.

Mounting sometimes didn't work at all and unmounting would time out, osx wouldn't shutdown until the timeout.

Also write speed was pretty bad at around 5-10MB/Sec.

In the end I gave up and partitioned a drive and used Fat32.

Cheers

Andy
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