Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

MacDrive 6, cross platform drives, anyone use?

M

Mojo67821

macrumors regular
Original poster
I have a MacBook pro and am looking into software called "MacDrive 6" (www.media4.com) to bridge the gap between my OSX side and my windows side. I do most of my work in Windows, but would like to have all my music, videos etc on the same drive so I can play them on the MAC side... I'd like to do this without converting to FAT32 because that makes the drive pretty useless to me (considering I edit video, and a file under 4 gigs is pretty rare).

I'm wondering if anyone has used this software, and can report to me if there are any limitations? I'd just hate to render a file unreadable, or have a drive that doesn't work quite right.
 
It works very well for the most part.

1. Using HPFS+ (Mac volume) to backup certain Windows data files (e.g., Outlook PST file) or using it to store Visual Studio project files may generate error.

2. If you insert Mac + PC hybrid CD/DVD (e.g., TurboTax installation CD), MacDrive will default to showing Mac partition only. You will need to go to its option screen and change it to show PC partition.

3. It won't repair HPFS+ disk (e.g., disconnecting external HPFS+ disk without using the eject option first). You will need to boot up in Mac OS X to do that.

Download and try the trial version and see if it works for you.
 
nutmac said:
Download and try the trial version and see if it works for you.
Click to expand...


Trial version sounds good...the software just sounded too good to be true, so I wanted to see if anyone had any experience with it.

I wonder why it is that apple and microsoft can't just agree on one industry standard, sort of like dvd's and other media companies have. Is one type of formatting superior to the other?
 
Mojo67821 said:
Trial version sounds good...the software just sounded too good to be true, so I wanted to see if anyone had any experience with it.

I wonder why it is that apple and microsoft can't just agree on one industry standard, sort of like dvd's and other media companies have. Is one type of formatting superior to the other?
Click to expand...

I've used MacDrive version 5 extensively to manage my iPod before Apple officially supported Windows. (And before I switched to a Mac fulltime.) The earlier version of MacDrive was fantastic so I see little reason to expect the most recent version to do a similarly good job.

Different filesystems have differring benefits and drawbacks. At this stage there are no compelling business reasons for filesystems to be standardized. And, for what it is worth, there are several standardized filesystems out there. Few of them are widely supported.
 
I've been using MacDrive since the '2000' version. Originally (like above) I bought it so I could use my Mac-formatted iPod on my PC.

Then, later, when I got a big external HD for my Mac Mini, it worked well enabling my PC to access that drive too.

I'll definitely be getting another licence for my Boot Camp Windows installation. My plan is to get a 2.5" bus-powered USB external drive, formatted as HFS+ and use it for storage in Boot Camp and Parallels Workstation. That way, I can keep my XP system partitions nice and small on my MBP's internal drive, and use an external drive for storage.

I've had zero problems reading and writing to HFS+ partitions from Windows with MacDrive. Performance seems absolutely fine.
 
displaced said:
I've had zero problems reading and writing to HFS+ partitions from Windows with MacDrive. Performance seems absolutely fine.
Click to expand...

I installed the trial version today (right after my windows install) and although I haven't tested it extensively yet, it seems to be doing it's job.

I have a question though, ever since I installed it and restarted my computer (at the request of the program), my computer keeps showing me the windows hourglass, indicating that the machine is doing something. It happens nonstop, about every 5 seconds, and stays on the screen for about a second or two. There's no indication that it's slowing the system down, but it's pretty disconcerting.

Is this something that always happens with this program? It only started happening after installing macdrive, so I can't think of any other applications that would cause this.

Has anyone else encountered this?
 
Is there any performance hit when trying to write to or read from a Mac formatted disk from Windows XP?

I'm particularly interested in the performance with common media file formats such as mp3, avi, wmv, xvid etc.etc.

I don't know what's better, creating a FAT32 drive for both OSX and Windows to access or just creating a Mac partition and using Macdrive to read and write to the partition from XP.

Comments appreciated.

Also I know macdrive is incompatible with Image Mounting tools such as Daemon Tools or Alcohol 120%. Are there any incompatibilites with Nero's imagedrive?
 
kkapoor said:
Is there any performance hit when trying to write to or read from a Mac formatted disk from Windows XP?

I'm particularly interested in the performance with common media file formats such as mp3, avi, wmv, xvid etc.etc.
Click to expand...

I've played ripped DVD's (not re-encoded, VIDEO_TS folders) from the HFS+ drive in Windows without any problems. And that's from an external Firewire 400 drive.

I don't know what's better, creating a FAT32 drive for both OSX and Windows to access or just creating a Mac partition and using Macdrive to read and write to the partition from XP.
Click to expand...

My drive was primarily intended for use by my Mac. FAT32's a pretty inefficient filesystem (especially on large partitions), and I was unwilling to forego any of HFS's Macintosh capabilities (resource forks, etc). I decided that I'd format as HFS+ and then deal with the PC-side as best I could.

Turned out that MacDrive has been a perfect solution for me. No complaints at all.

Also I know macdrive is incompatible with Image Mounting tools such as Daemon Tools or Alcohol 120%. Are there any incompatibilites with Nero's imagedrive?
Click to expand...

I've not encountered this... incompatible in what way? Do you mean having (for example) a CD's ISO image stored on an HFS+ partition, and attempting to mount that ISO via Daemon Tools/A120% fails? I've only ever used Nero ImageDrive, but can't say for certain whether or not I've actually used to to mount an ISO stored on an HFS+ drive.
 
Confused about Macdrive

I've been trying make sense of Macdrive. I'm using it with Parallels and for some reason it doesn't show me the existence of the OS X (HFS+) HD. The only HD that it lists is the virtual one it that it has created for XP.

I've not loaded any other utilities like Daemons and can't find any sptd drivers, as apparently is sometimes a problem.

Please help!
 
Jazzbo242 said:
I've been trying make sense of Macdrive. I'm using it with Parallels and for some reason it doesn't show me the existence of the OS X (HFS+) HD. The only HD that it lists is the virtual one it that it has created for XP.

I've not loaded any other utilities like Daemons and can't find any sptd drivers, as apparently is sometimes a problem.

Please help!
Click to expand...

MacDrive and Parallels are not really meant for eachother. I use MacDrive from my BootCamp-provided Windows partition (I use that when I need to do "windows"-based things for work) so that I can access my Mac hard drive and transfer things back and forth.

I also have Parallels running on the OSX side of life (for when I need to run a Windows app etc.)

In both cases (because OSX can't write to NTFS disks - yet!!!) the data transfers into the Windows environment has to be a pull form the Windows side of things. Within the Parallels virtual machine, you can use the "Shared Folders" mechanism that will use the network emulation to transfer files in both directions with the host (OSX).

Because the Parallels virtual machine is isolated fom the host, it does not have direct access to the disk (the 'hard drive' parallels uses is a file on the host system) and so cannot see the various partitions there may be on it (unlike the situation established by BootCamp where the Windows partition is visible to the OSX one and vice-versa).

Bottom line - if you are running Parallels, use Shared Folders; if you are booting to a Windows partition use MacDrive.

Hope this helps

Susan
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back