External NTFS to HFS Airport disk syn/clone

[hatehereyes]

I've got 2 WD passport's, one setup as the airport disk on my airport extreme and the other just hooked up to my mac pro via usb.

When i upload songs to itunes the files get copied over to the airport disk since my other two computers sync the itunes library with it also. When i'm on the go i like to bring the other WD hooked up to my mac pro along so i can listen to music on my laptop.

What i'm trying to do is find a way to sync/clone the two drives so that when i take the USB drive with me i will still have all my music/media files which is identical to the airport disk.

I've tried using SuperDuper but it doesn't support NTFS.

NTFS - connected to mac pro USB
HFS - Airport disk.

Trying to clone Airport disk over to the NTFS HD

 

[madog]

By default, Mac OS X can read NTFS formatted drives but cannot write files to it.

You'll either need to format the NTFS drive to FAT ("MS DOS", reads and writes to Mac and Windows and is the same format as a standard flash/boot/thumb drive but has a 4GB single file limitation because it's older; or just format it to HFS if you only use it on a Mac anyway) format which would allow you to just manually copy/replace your iTunes library every now and then to that drive before you take it somewhere with you. Maybe there is some app, Automator or Apple script that you can make to do it automatically but I'm not familiar with that.

Otherwise, there are some tricks to being able to write to an NTFS drive though I have never done it, but I did find this:

http://blogs.oreilly.com/digitalmedia/2008/12/read-and-write-ntfs-hard-drive.html

 

[hatehereyes]

Thanks for the reply. but i need the other drive to be NTFS since my laptop is a PC.

I guess i am just gonna have to format it to HFS since i found MacDrive which lets windows read HFS formatted drives.

 

[madog]

Thanks for the reply. but i need the other drive to be NTFS since my laptop is a PC.

I guess i am just gonna have to format it to HFS since i found MacDrive which lets windows read HFS formatted drives.

You can plug in that NTFS drive to your Mac, copy everything over to it, and then partition the drive to Master Boot Record, and then format it to MS DOS (FAT) through Apple's Disk Utility. You can find further instructions if you need around here or on Google, but that will format the drive similar to what a Flash Drive is, in which case it is read and writable to both Mac OS and Windows, just with that individual file size limitation of 4GB.

 

[hatehereyes]

You can plug in that NTFS drive to your Mac, copy everything over to it, and then partition the drive to Master Boot Record, and then format it to MS DOS (FAT) through Apple's Disk Utility. You can find further instructions if you need around here or on Google, but that will format the drive similar to what a Flash Drive is, in which case it is read and writable to both Mac OS and Windows, just with that individual file size limitation of 4GB.

Ah yeah that's a possibility but i don't like using FAT since the max transfer at a time is 4gb which is way to small for me since i sometimes tranfers folders of over 20gb from drive to drive.

I'll find out tomorrow if MacDrive works like it should on my laptop.

 

[madog]

Ah yeah that's a possibility but i don't like using FAT since the max transfer at a time is 4gb which is way to small for me since i sometimes tranfers folders of over 20gb from drive to drive.

I'll find out tomorrow if MacDrive works like it should on my laptop.

I could be wrong, but as far as I know you can transfer multiple gigs of files to FAT (since technically it just adds one at a time), it only becomes a problem when a single file (not folder of files) is over 4GB. I'm not 100% on this though.

 

[hatehereyes]

Oh you might be right. I remember when i found about the 4gb limit i was trying to transfer one big rar file that was over 4gb i think.

I'll try it out and see if that works.

Thanks.

Edit: Yes transferring multiple files less than 4gb does work. I'm now currently transferring a 17gb folder with no problems at all.

Another question...
Would you know how to get super duper or any other HD cloning program to see the airport disk as a drive and transfer from there onto the USB drive?