Home Network Backup and Hard Drive Format

[Howard54]

I run a small home network with mostly Windows computers but now with my new Mac Mini included. Right now I am backing up two of the computers separately and a few not at all. I am looking into a networking backup hard drive such as a Seagate Black Armor or WD World Edition.

My question is whether I can backup all the computers on the network or if the Mac will not be backed up because of the different hard drive formats on the computers.

If the network backup drive is foratted using NTFS, will it be able to backup and restore to the Mac as necessary. Will the Mac be able to read/write to the network backup drive as necessary?

Any other backup suggestions for this mixed environment would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

[bmcgonag]

I run a small home network with mostly Windows computers but now with my new Mac Mini included. Right now I am backing up two of the computers separately and a few not at all. I am looking into a networking backup hard drive such as a Seagate Black Armor or WD World Edition.

My question is whether I can backup all the computers on the network or if the Mac will not be backed up because of the different hard drive formats on the computers.

If the network backup drive is foratted using NTFS, will it be able to backup and restore to the Mac as necessary. Will the Mac be able to read/write to the network backup drive as necessary?

Any other backup suggestions for this mixed environment would be appreciated. Thanks!

I don't believe you'd be able to use an NTFS formatted drive for Mac Backups. Mac can't write to NTFS, though it can read from it. Sorry for the bad news.

Fat32 is however read / wrtie for both Windows and Mac. The limitation there is that you don't want any file larger than 4 GB...it won't be handled by the FAT32 format.

HTH

Brian