external firewire hard drive problems

[garzy]

hey

i just got a lacie 40gb pocketdrive. i need to use it on both pcs and macs. i formatted it on a pc running xp. today i tried to use it on an emac and got the message "This disk is unreadable, do you want to initialize" Do I have to reformat the drive everytime I cross platforms??? any help is much appreciated

thanks

[zarathustra]

MacOS X should read all FAT and NTFS drives no problem. What format did you use exactly?

[garzy]

i used NFTS because it newer. this emac was running classic. im at school now and none of the macs here run OSX :(

[zarathustra]

Maybe there is an extension for OS9 to enable NTFS volumes??

This is what I found on Apple's support site about OS9:

"It is only possible to read FAT and FAT32 formatted drives in a Macintosh. Do Not use NTFS formatted drives in a Macintosh computer."

SOL

[garzy]

wow thanks for the info zarathustra

i found that support page and it said
do not use a NTFS with a macintosh computer. i dont think it matters what OS your using

i guess ill just have to reformat to FAT32 so i can use it in classic, OSX, and XP

what are the limitations of FAT32?

[zarathustra]

I could have sworn that I have used NTFS volumes with my PowerBook using OSX before...

Anywho, the few negatives of FAT32 are (compared to NTFS) - no per user permissions and larger block size. Other than that, almost every X86 machine will be able to read a FAT32, compared to Win2000/XP (NT4??) compatibility for NTFS (I think *scratches head*).

[howard]

i got a new external hard drive too..how do i reformat it?...i checked in the disc utility...do i just press erase??

[saabmp3]

Ok, if you do some kernel hacking, Unix can (and linux) read NTFS systems and there is beta support for a write to NTFS systems but it is very buggy. Apple only has support for FAT file systems right now so your going to have to use that.