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External Harddrive between PC&MAC (FAT32 ISSUE)

esadb

esadb

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Nov 29, 2008
1,184
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So i have a 500gb external hard drive. I made 2 partitions on it. 1 is around 120gb or so thats my Macbooks time machine backup.

The other ~380gb is for just anything movies,music etc.. Now the issue I'm running into is in order for that partition I had to format it to FAT32 for it to work under MAC and Windows.

But now I got files that are ~4.5gb and I can't put them on there as the limit is only 4gb with FAT32.

What are my options this is pretty darn annoying..
 
MacDrive for Windows, to be able to read and write to HFS+ formatted volumes.

Or use the NTFS-3G driver to write to NTFS formatted volumes in Mac OS X.


GGJstudios said:
FAT32
  • Read/Write FAT32 from both native Windows and native Mac OS X.
  • No individual file larger than 4GB.
NTFS
HFS
  • Read/Write HFS from native Mac OS X
  • To Read/Write HFS from Windows, Install MacDrive
  • To Read HFS (but not Write) from Windows, Install HFSExplorer
Click to expand...
 
So my best bet is to go with the NTFS-3G option?

Now the question is.. Can i convert the fat32 partition to NTFS without having to remove the stuff then format?

Because there is quite a bit of stuff lol and i dont really know where to store it if i have to remove it before changing to NTFS..
 
esadb said:
So my best bet is to go with the NTFS-3G option?

Now the question is.. Can i convert the fat32 partition to NTFS without having to remove the stuff then format?

Because there is quite a bit of stuff lol and i dont really know where to store it if i have to remove it before changing to NTFS..
Click to expand...

Maybe via Windows, but I don't know that anymore. I seem to recall a method in Windows 2000 via the Command Prompt. Maybe a www search can prompt you to some guides, if possible.
 
spinnerlys said:
Maybe via Windows, but I don't know that anymore. I seem to recall a method in Windows 2000 via the Command Prompt. Maybe a www search can prompt you to some guides, if possible.
Click to expand...

Yeap that did it!!

Convert driveletter: /fs:ntfs (did under Win7)


Now hopefully this didnt screw up the timemachine backup but either way ill be able to resynch it with my mac.

Great, so basically all i gotta do is install that NTFS-3G thing?
 
esadb said:
Yeap that did it!!

Convert driveletter: /fs:ntfs (did under Win7)


Now hopefully this didnt screw up the timemachine backup but either way ill be able to resynch it with my mac.

Great, so basically all i gotta do is install that NTFS-3G thing?
Click to expand...

Yes. Though don't expect fast transfer rates with the free version of NTFS-3G, I never got more than 20MB/s, though if you don't transfer GBs on a daily basis, that should be okay.
 
As far as I can tell the free version consists of only 15 day trial.. After that its $30
 
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