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Firewire HD partition Mac OS/NTFS ?

Z

zer0army

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 28, 2003
109
0
Toronto
I’m planning on taking an existing Maxtor 60gig drive I have and pop it into an external firewire enclosure. I want to use this for back up purposes when my new G5 arrives. My question is, can I partition this drive and have one partition formatted in mac OS extended and the other partition formatted for NTFS ? I have a few windows machines which must still be used and I would like to back the data up on them as well.

My main concern is backing up the data from my mac (images, video, text) from the windows machines I only need to back up text files and a few images. So I was thinking If possible doing a partition of 50 gigs mac os and a 10 gig windows NTFS.

Also can anyone recommend a good firewire enclosure (under $100)
And what programs do people used for backing up data under OSX ?
 
I've got no idea whether you can put an HFS+ and NTFS partition on the same drive. However, I believe Panther's got NTFS support (don't quote me on this!) so in the worst case you could just format the whole drive for NTFS.

Edit: Emphasis added.
 
do...not...format in NTFS. i repeat DO NOT FORMAT IN NTFS. you will never access it from your Mac. IF you have to have a PC format, use FAT32, and make sure its on the first partition of the HD.
 
Originally posted by sparkleytone
do...not...format in NTFS. i repeat DO NOT FORMAT IN NTFS. you will never access it from your Mac. IF you have to have a PC format, use FAT32, and make sure its on the first partition of the HD.
Click to expand...

So then are you saying that if I format the first partition as FAT32 and the second as HFS+ when I plug the drive into the PC it will read and show the FAT32 Partition only, and then when I plug the drive into my Mac it will read and show both ?

If this is correct how do I go about formatting the drives since I know windows cannot format one partition as HFS+. Is 10.2 able to format a partion in FAT32 ?
 
format the first partition in windows....you can create the partitions however you like. then format the other partition using the Mac. it should work this way.
 
Originally posted by sparkleytone
format the first partition in windows....you can create the partitions however you like. then format the other partition using the Mac. it should work this way.
Click to expand...

Ahhhhh yes now I get it. You made it sound so simple. Thanks sparkleytone! I don't know why I was thinking of all these complicated ways of doing it when it really wasn't that hard.

while your at it sparkleytone what do you suggest using as a good backup program for 10.2 ?
 
the only thing i have really used for backup purposes is the Apple Backup.app. but you have to have .mac. i hear Carbon Copy Cloner is a good one.
 
when i first got my Fw drive i tried the fat/hfs one one drive thing and it never worked right ....i tried usign the pc fiirst and then reformating one partition but then the mac stopped reading the fat32 partition
 
CCC is great. It's quite powerful. It's interface sucks. Try Deja Vu, i have it performing various mirroring every night... Just make sure your computer is awake when you have it scheduled to run...

pnw
 
Yea CCC does look quite powerful. But I think its overkill for what I need to do.

Deja Vu looks easy and simple and does exactly what I'm looking to do (thanks paulwhannel)

For the firewire enclosure I think I'm going to go with this one

http://www.byteccusa.com/product/enclosure/ME-720.htm

I can pick it up for cheap works on Mac/PC and seems like it should do the job. Anyone have have experience with this product ?
 
Originally posted by zer0army
It looks like this back up utility is quite popular.

http://www.executivesync.com

And I want somthing that can be setup to sync certain folders on my computer with my backup drive. This looks like the one, anyone use it ?
Click to expand...

I use Synk and it rocks.

It lets you set up Documents that copy a folder to or from a drive or synchronizes.

You can make a document that runs several small documents too.

For example, I have 5 Synk documents, one that does my Address Book folder, my Mail folder, my Safari Folder, my Documents and my website files. I use them individually to get data between my iBook and iMac. I also have a document that runs all 5 of them at once when I know i need to get em back in order.

It is shareware but works in free mode just fine and it has a Preview before you run if you want.

Further more, it will MOUNT a drive if it's not mounted. I love that because i dont have to mount my iMac's hard drive before running, it tells me it is not local then mounts it and goes right into Preview mode.

Synk rocks! get it here http://www.decimus.net/synk/

MacBoyX
 
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