LaCie d2 external

[steeleclipse]

Does anybody know what will happen if I connect my LaCie d2 external harddrive to a windoze firewire box?

When I bought it, I didn't have to format it when I hooked it up to my mac (running 10.2), so I have a pretty good feeling that when I hook it to a windoze box (running xp) it will see the file system from my mac. I need those files in tact on a windoze box.

Can anybody confirm that? It is really important.


Thanks

[timbloom]

Hmmmm, well this is interesting, when you bought the LaCie, was it specifically Mac formatted?

Here is the deal.. Mac's can read DOS formatted drives normally without a hitch. But widows needs extra software to read a Mac (HFS+) formatted drive, as of the last time I check it was MacDrive.

Normally most drives come DOS formatted, and I am not sure if OS X shows you if it is a DOS formatted disk.. BUT you should be able to find out if you get info on the drive, it should tell you the format there, 5th item down.

[FelixDerKater]

Does Windows read UFS formatted drives? If so, that could be an alternative for cross-platform use without MacDrive.

[jkojima]

If you plug the drive in to the Windows box, one of two things will happen: best case, it will mount and you'll have full access to your files; worst case, you won't be able to access the drive (Windows will ask to format it when you double click on its icon), but as long as you DON'T reformat the drive, the data will be fine when you plug back in to the Mac.

As the other people have said, you can use programs like MacDrive to mount this volume on Windows if the drive turns out to be formatted in Mac HFS+ format.