f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

I have a 3TB external drive (USB2 and 3) that I would like to be able to use on a Mac and (saldy) on a PC.

My only option seems to format it to FAT32 or exFAT from what I can tell. Is this correct? Are the performance implications of doing this as opposed to using a HFS format significant in day to day usage?

Finally does Time Machine need a specific disk format or will it work with exFAT?

Thanks in advance

ScoobyNoob79

Fat32 has a max limit of 4gb transfers, so you end up having to split files when backing up.

So you'd be best formatting the drive as NTFS to overcome that limit, but for OS X to read/write to NTFS you will need to install NTFS-3G on your Mac.

Time machine needs Mac OS Extended Journaled.

You cannot partition the drive as 50% NTFS for backups and 50% Mac OS Extended Journaled for Time machine as it will not be able to be used to recover.

Your best option would be to have 2 drives, 1 formatted as Mac OS Extended Journaled for Time machine and 1 formatted as NTFS for file sharing between Win/OS X.

Or, as I do, I have 103.8GB DropBox which I use for sharing between machines and also run MAMP's htdocs folder in it, then a seperate drive for Time machine.

NTFS-3G: https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/24481/ntfs-3g

Snooky

If it has been setup already on the mac you don't need to format it! To use drives already associated with macs, on your windows ran PC download a file called macdrive ! This will allow the windows PC to read/write on the external drive!

If you do format it! Use the mac to do it! It will be easier I find using that macdrive software changing from the 2!!

Hope this helps

Snooky

Snooky

If you are confident with what you say you want to do check out this link might explain/ help a lot more!

http://www.pcworld.com/article/25043..._and_a_pc.html

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

Doh, never thought of looking for a Windows driver to read Mac formatted drives! That would be the best solution I guess!

Currently I have the thing formatted as exFAT to get round the FAT32 file siize and partition limits.

Thanks for the replies, will go and try MacDrive.

ScoobyNoob79

Uh, wait. The drive is already exFat, both mac and win can read/write to exFat, so the only other prerequisite is time machine, which would need to be seperate os extended journaled anyway.

Job done.

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

Yes but HFS, HFS+ etc. are more effiicient disk formats than exFAT and ultimately the drive will be used in a Mac a lot more than a PC, I just need to be able to get things off old NTFS drives on my two two PCs onto it which I can with MacDrive.

Have been slowly moving from PC to Mac, but 2014 is the year where I finally consign Windows to the 'only to be used for testing' role!

ScoobyNoob79

Yeah HFS is slightly more efficient and would be needed to use the drive with time machine.

But I wouldn't use the same drive for backing up files AND time machine, time machine should have its own independant drive to prevent corruption and write errors.

Why not format the drive as exFat, transfer all the data from the NTFS drives onto it, in turn transfer all that data onto the Mac then reformat the drive as HFS as a dedicated time machine drive.

You have a ton of other options too.

If you're keeping the PC's just install NTFS-3G on the Mac then you'll be able to browse the Windows machines from the Mac and then transfer/use the Windows files from/to the Mac on your home network, leaving the external drive free for HFS + time machine.

I have have a few machines / laptops running, for daily work the main would be a Windows testing PC which is slowly being phased out (windows installs on a Mac through parallels) and Linux development server, iMac and Macbook Pro.

I use Dropbox to share all sorts of files that I need to be available away from my home network which I save directly back to Dropbox so every machine is updated, then I've gradually moved everything to my Linux development server as a central hub which everything can access, this has 2 redundant drives and through a combination on cron jobs and rsync they a used as backup drives.

Finally, a 1 TB external drive for time machine backups.

Options.

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

Should probably have explained that the Time Machine question was not really related to this drive, I was just thinking out loud about whether it would work with exFAT so in an emergency I could use the Time Machine drive on a PC if I needed to. Stupid thinking really as the Windows machines will be retired for anything but testing soon.

Most of my major files are on a Linux server anyway, it's just legacy files and my iTunes libarary that are on PC drives right now. Once they are safely transferred to the Mac thne I can forget about them.

ScoobyNoob79

Use Parallels for windows testing from your Mac bud, virtual machines allowing you to have them all open at once when testing.

I have XP/IE8, Vista/IE9, 7/IE11, works great!

Markus

If you only need read-only access to locally attached HFS+ then the bootcamp drivers will do that for you. There is likely somewhere out there where you can obtain them separately (I think bootcamp assistant downloads them these days, as there isn't install media for the OS as there used to be).

If you need read/write to locally attached HFS+ drives, MacDrive should do the trick. I've used it before and it works a treat.

If you need to access over the network, enable SMB / Windows sharing in Sharing control panel, if that fails to work properly, you can google SMBUp which will use a non-apple version of SAMBA, as Apple's version has been known to prevent windows machines from connecting via SMB.

tarmac terror

iTrader: (2)

Install HFSExplorer on your windows machine (free open source product). Set up your external drive to use HFS, HFS+ or HFSX filesystem or whatever suits you as a Mac user.

This will all the use use of a native file system with your Mac - which I assume to be your main machine, while enabling RW access on the drive from your windows platform.

Have you considered using NAS storage as opposed to USB connected storage?

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

Thanks for the replies all, appreciated

So it's an OpenSource product that does what Macdrive does yes?

I had, but I want to use the drive with an asynchronous USB DAC for my hi-fi as well and on the Naim forums a few people had trouble stremaing from NAS due to network slowdowns etc.