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Ext. FW/USB HD question

jxyama

jxyama

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Apr 3, 2003
3,735
1
I recently bought an external, bus powered 40 GB FW/USB2.0 HD. It was pre-formatted when I bought it and claimed to work on both Mac and Windows. Initially, it was giving me little troubles working with my PB 12" so I have since then re-formatted the drive in Mac Extended (HFS+) format.

Questions:

1) Since it's in Mac format, it probably won't work with Windows anymore?

2) If I wanted it to work on both PC and Mac, how should I format it? (Format it to FAT32 using Windows? Any other "mutually compatible" formats? I hear Macs can't recognize the Windows NT format.. Can't remember what it's called...)

3) I imagine that the case is Mac being able to read PC formatted disk and NOT that there's a mutually compatible format, right?

4) Can I partition the drive so half will work with Windows and the other half, with Mac? If so, what to use to format the disk?

5) Unrelated: What do I need to do in order to install Jag on the HD so I can boot off of it, if necessary?

Any help is appreciated. Thanks!
 
daveL

daveL

macrumors 68020
Jun 18, 2003
2,425
0
Montana
Well, since nobody has replied, I'll give it a shot. There are utilities out there (Intech Speedtools, Disk Warrior?) that can help you partition the drive for use by both Mac and PC. However, the file systems of the 2 OSs are not compatible, natively. You'll have to research these utilities; I have not needed to have Mac and PC access to the same drive.

As far as installing Jaguar, that's easy. Plug the FW drive in and open up Disk Utility. The drive should show up in the drive list. Select the drive and click on the "Partition" tab. Decide how large you want the partition and create it. Now put your Jag Install CD in and select it as your startup disk. Restart your machine, with the FW drive still connected. When asked which drive to use for the installation, select the FW drive partition. There you go! When the installation it complete, just make sure you have the FW drive selected as your startup disk.
 
jxyama

jxyama

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Apr 3, 2003
3,735
1
thanks for the info. i will try the jag trick...

i guess for the other part, i'm wondering how any storage media is formatted to be compatible with both PC and Mac. even usb thumb drives are compatible with both. what format is being used?
 
S

slowtreme

macrumors 6502
May 27, 2003
348
0
Tampa FL
When I put my USB thumbdrive in my iBook I get a kernal panic and have to pull the battery and power cable to get it to reboot. I can reproduce this 100% of the time. The thumbdrive works on all PCs I have put it in.
 
jxyama

jxyama

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Apr 3, 2003
3,735
1
Originally posted by Lanbrown
The driver for the other file systems is included in the OS and that is why thumb drives and flash cards work. If MS included HFS support or OS X had NTFS support, they would be recognized.
Click to expand...

ok... thanks for the pointer to the thread, but it still doesn't address my question. so, *does* MS support HFS? OS X, apparently, support FAT32, but not NTFS? does NT support FAT32? the other thread was about the readability of FAT32 formatted disk. I am wondering about what format to use or being used on disks that I don't know the formatting of...

can i conclude that these thumb drives are formatted in FAT32 so that PCs with FAT32 and NTFS as well as Macs can read them? in reverse, if I format a disk in FAT32, that would then be readable by PCs (both Win 9X and NT based) and Macs?

Edit: Ok, i just checked my thumb drive. it's FAT16 and readable by Mac OS X...
 
L

Lanbrown

macrumors 6502a
Mar 20, 2003
893
0
2000 supports FAT32 NT 4.0 and earlier does not, they support NTFS and FAT16 only. MacDrive adds support for HFS to windows.

Why would a thumb drive need to be FAT32? Just because they it can be read by different OS's doesn't mean that it is FAT32. A CD and DVD can be read by OS X, Solaris, AIX, Windows, BSD, linsux, HP-UX, Tru-64, etc. A CD does not use FAT32. The thumb drives as well as other compact storage media was introduced and drivers were put into the OS to support it. If you bought some devices they gave you a disk with a driver on it to add support for it in an older OS.
 
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