firewire drive not working in Windows

[4fingered]

Hi I posted this in the 'Windows on mac' section but there are has been no responses there so maybe someone here can help

I have a g-drive that runs on FW 800 on my new mbp. I have a file that I downloaded on OSX that I wanna transfer over the the XP side of my computer.

When I boot up the hardrive in windows windows makes its little "hardware recognized" sound but I can't find the hardrive in my computer. in the task bar there is a little thing that will "safely remove G-teh GDRIVE OXFORD IDE Device 1IEEE 1394 SBP2 device".

At first I thought the drive might have set up so that it's a file system that only OSX recognized but wouldn't that mean that it wouldn't even show up in windows?

I tried googleing this first and someone said that you had to go to network connections and disable 1394 then enable again and it worked for some. the thing is though it wont let me disable this. If anyone has an idea of what to do that would be great thanks.

 

[11800506]

Well just to be sure it isn't the file system that is causing the problem, what file system is the drive using?

 

[840quadra]

Go into OS X and look to see what format the filesystem is by opening "get info" from the file or contextual menu. If it is Mac OS Extended, you will not be able to see it in XP. XP can only see FAT 16, FAT 32 or NTFS.

 

[4fingered]

im currently at work right now (damn night shift) but I'll check it when I get home. I should be able to reformat the drive in one of those filesystems though, no?

 

[TXBDan]

Sounds like its Mac (HFS+). Check out MacDrive, it should let you access it in Windows.

 

[nikiski]

I would also recommend MacDrive. As...
1. Windows cannot read File Systems other than FAT, FAT32 and NTFS.
2. Mac can read from NTFS but not write to it.
3. The file size limit is 4GB for FAT32.

Thus, installing MacDrive on your Windows PC is the best idea. Alternatively you can install MacFUSE on your Mac to let it read or write to NTFS drives. I guess it depends on how often you use each machine. Personally I like HFS+ as the file system.