I decided to run mac os x for my htpc. I have Mac os x installed on my 320gb hdd and have another 1.5tb hdd from my vista machine with all my media on it in the computer. Will Mac os x be able to read/write and use that hdd without formatting it?
If that will work how do I share my media directories with my other windows computers on the network?
You will need to either use MacFuse + NTFS 3G (Free) or Paragon NTFS (Paid). This will allow read/write but is nowhere near as fast as read/write to native HFS+ (Mac OS Extended). I used to use MacFuse + NTFS 3G all the time. But I decided to give Paragon NTFS a try and found it to be much more reliable.
Since you want to share the volume only Paragon NTFS allows this. I did not even know this benefit until I just decided to connect for the heck of it with a PC I setup with Windows 7 RC1. As I was checking to find out how easy networking is with Windows 7. By the way it is a vast improvement over XP and Vista; XP because it was simpler, Vista because it worked without tweaking while Vista has to be tweaked like crazy to work with Macs or XP. Since NTFS-3G treats NTFS as a network mount rather than a local drive it can not share the volumes.
Neither of these solutions is perfect. If you are dedicating this computer to OS X and not dual booting I would repartition the hard drive to Mac OS Extended (journaled). I would also suggest getting a second 1.5TB HD and set the two up in RAID 1 so that your media is duplicated otherwise one drive failure and everything is lost.
I would also suggest getting a second 1.5TB HD and set the two up in RAID 1 so that your media is duplicated otherwise one drive failure and everything is lost.
If you use RAID, any inadvertent deletions or file system corruptions will be duplicated on the mirror. I suggest using Carbon Copy Cloner to duplicate your drives. It has a scheduler, so you can automate the process. This gives a nice compromise between backup and redundancy. Mirroring only gives you redundancy.
I share my media drives from my Mac machines as I can share AFP to Mac and SMB to Windows. IMO, much easier then goofing around with the Paragon/MacFuse options.
