External Hard Drive///transfering File Problem

[dg45]

I Have A External Hard Drive That I Use With My Windows Desktop Mostly.
Now When I Hook My Powerbookti, I Can Only Look At The Files But I Cant Transfer Files To The Hard Drive And Cant Transfer Files To The Hard Drive.

Is This Allowed/ To Transfer Files To/from The Hard Drive Using My Pb If The Hard Drive Was/is By Windows?

How Can I Transfer My Files From My Powerbook To The Windows
External Hard Drive?

Anyone?
Help Me
Thanks

 

[The General]

You Need To Backup All The Data On The External Harddrive And Format It As "msdos" In Disk Utility. That Will Format It As FAT32, Which Is Readable And Writable In Windows And In Mac Os X Leopard.

The Reason You Can Only Read From The External Harddrive Right Now Is Because It's Formatted As NTFS, Which Mac Os X Cannot Write To, But Can Read.

 

[madog]

The drive is most likely formatted as NTFS; a Windows format which can only be read (and not written) by Mac OS X. There are some apps such as MacFUSE which can allow Mac OS X to also write to ntfs drives, however, if not done properly can cause errors with the drive format (and cause you to lose all your data, and have to reformat it).

Otherwise, you would need to reformat the device to FAT ("MS-DOS" in Apple's DiskUtility) which is what most flash drive are formatted as. It is an older format so it has a single file size limit of 4GB, but is read/writeable on Win and Mac OS X.

 

[dg45]

You Need To Backup All The Data On The External Harddrive And Format It As "msdos" In Disk Utility. That Will Format It As FAT32, Which Is Readable And Writable In Windows And In Mac Os X Leopard.

The Reason You Can Only Read From The External Harddrive Right Now Is Because It's Formatted As NTFS, Which Mac Os X Cannot Write To, But Can Read.

how do i back up all the files/stuff on the extermall hard drive?

also how do i format the disk utility? do i do it on my PB or Windows desktop?

 

[dg45]

thanks to everyone

The drive is most likely formatted as NTFS; a Windows format which can only be read (and not written) by Mac OS X. There are some apps such as MacFUSE which can allow Mac OS X to also write to ntfs drives, however, if not done properly can cause errors with the drive format (and cause you to lose all your data, and have to reformat it).

Otherwise, you would need to reformat the device to FAT ("MS-DOS" in Apple's DiskUtility) which is what most flash drive are formatted as. It is an older format so it has a single file size limit of 4GB, but is read/writeable on Win and Mac OS X.

well i have alot of important files/pictures on the external hard drive and if i lose them i will never sleep.
so is MacFuse recommanded or to risky?

is there any other APPS that dont have any risky in using it?

thanks

 

[madog]

how do i back up all the files/stuff on the extermall hard drive?

also how do i format the disk utility? do i do it on my PB or Windows desktop?

I would recommend just backing it up to your Mac if you have enough space. Since Mac OS X can read the drive, you can create a folder on your desktop (or where ever) and copy al the files from the drive to that, reformat the drive, then copy everything back over. This is of course if you want to continue using the drive for both systems. Otherwise you can back it up, then just format it for Mac only.


Also, when formatting, to get FAT (MS-DOS) to work properly with Windows, you should also change the partition table to Master Boot Record (MBR). It's just an extra couple steps when formatting the drive and there is plenty of info around here on how to do it exactly.


EDIT: I'm not too sure if there are any requirements for MacFUSE, but one thing I do know is that if it is set up in such a way (with indexing or something like that which is a "feature" of NTFS), you can lose all your data by merely failing to eject the device properly.

 

[The General]

how do i back up all the files/stuff on the extermall hard drive?

also how do i format the disk utility? do i do it on my PB or Windows desktop?

Copy all of the files on it to another external harddrive or into a folder on your Mac's harddrive. Then open /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility ... select your external harddrive and go to the Erase tab. Select MS-DOS format from the drop down list and hit erase.

Then, copy all of your files back into the external harddrive.

 

[dg45]

Thank You Everyone

Copy all of the files on it to another external harddrive or into a folder on your Mac's harddrive. Then open /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility ... select your external harddrive and go to the Erase tab. Select MS-DOS format from the drop down list and hit erase.

Then, copy all of your files back into the external harddrive.

nice thanks.

NOW
madog AND The General

the problem i have is the PB only has 80gb HD and my desktop has 500gb HD so i cant use either one to backup nothing from the external.
lololollhaha dam it.

 

[The General]

Then you should install MacFUSE with ntfs-3g so you can read/write the harddrive as it is.

 

[The Admiral]

yeah nfts-3g rules. i haven't used it on OS X but it's worked flawlessly for me for a couple of years on ubuntu.