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Configuring Internal HD

D

dougk

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 6, 2008
3
0
Hi All,

I am trying to convert from a PC to a Mac. I just picked up a Mac Pro partitioned the primary HD, 50/50. to run boot camp. In the remaining bays I have 2-1 TB drives. What is the best way to format/configure these drives to work with both Windows and Mac files? When in windows, I would like to read/write to pc files and conversely read/write pc files when running the Mac os.

Thanks
 
OSX cannot natively read NTFS. So you will not be able to easily share drives without possibly buying additional software as I recall.

Do a search in the Windows section of these forums, I have seen this question get asked quite a few times.
 
I am sure the answer is in these forumns, my question is broad and the rabbit holes are long.

Do you recal the name of the software?
 
you dont need any additional software other than what came with your drives load the software on the windows side and the os X side will see it no problem thats what i had to do.
 
If you want to read/write on both of the drives using both operating systems, format the drives in FAT32 (or MS-DOS as Disk Utility calls it). I think Disk Utility is in the Applications folder; open it and select the drive you want to format, select the format, then click okay. I'm sure there's someone here who can explain it better; in fact, I would wait for one of those people to come along and do so, seeing as I've never done that before.
 
jpmittins said:
If you want to read/write on both of the drives using both operating systems, format the drives in FAT32 (or MS-DOS as Disk Utility calls it). I think Disk Utility is in the Applications folder; open it and select the drive you want to format, select the format, then click okay. I'm sure there's someone here who can explain it better; in fact, I would wait for one of those people to come along and do so, seeing as I've never done that before.
Click to expand...

He's talking about 1TB drives, FAT32 won't cut it.
 
Ooh, so FAT32 would work since he would do it outside of Windows. Excellent. Of course, we would run into the permission issues, file limitation, etc. :eek:
 
MacFUSE ( http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/23729/macfuse ) is the open source software that removes the limitation of writing to NTFS volumes when using the Mac OS (when used in conjuction with NTFS-3G- http://macntfs-3g.blogspot.com/ ). The Mac OS natively can read from NTFS volumes but on its own lacks the ability to write to them.

This free combination removes that limitation and works like a charm from my experience though of course YMMV.
 
Great info! Thank you so much. MacFuse sounds like the perfect solution. There is additional info on MacFuse at youtube - cnet has a good review.
 
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