Can Mac write to a External drive thats attached to a Windows laptop over network?

I got my first Macbook Pro on Friday , still learning some stuff after reading from here. So far so good no big issues. Loving Trackpad and gestures.

I have a 1tb External drive. I want to use it for backup from Macbook. Plan to use old Vaio as Media server/streamer by connecting that laptop to my router. So I was thinking after leaving some space aside for backup and format that partition as HFS+ what would be good way for rest of drive.

I want to be able to copy my files from Mac to External drive over the network , read files from it (media etc). So should it be HFS+ or NTFS ? Now another thing is I have a WDTV Live Plus which I use to watch media over TV. WDTV does read NTFS, HFS+ both. But if I format entire drive in HFS+ format would Vaio will be able to stream media off it using Plex media server?

And last question can Disk Utility format and partition my external in to two different formats if needed?

AirThis said:

Yes. See explanations below.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1568

Click to expand...

Will read them now. Another thing is I did just for testing purpose access my laptop from Macbook and I could see the files but they were not playing using vlc.

And I am able to connect to Windows laptop, I could see files on its drive too. And all this over wifi network at home. But I do plan to connect vaio to router using ethernet. But Mac will be accessing over wifi.

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RebeccaL said:

If the media servers runs Windows you will need to have the drive in NTFS format, as Windows can't access an HFS+ drive. Unless you install a third party program.

Macs have no problem reading NTFS, but won't write to it. But there is the free NTFS-3G that can allow Macs to write to NTFS drives.


Hope this helps.

Click to expand...

Most probably then have a part as HFS+ for back up. And rest in NTFS and install some app which allows Macbook to write to Ntfs.

When I posted the thread I could see my Vista laptop from Mac , Now I can see it sometimes but Can not connect to it. Did try to tweak few things in Vista too. Then tried to share Mac and could connect to Mac through Vista and access files too but not happening the other way around. Tried reading links posted earlier and tried to follow but no luck.