My first spat with Apple :(

[Sean7512]

Can you reformat Ipods to Mac? Will it work on Windows machine then?

No, Mac formatted iPods will only work on a Mac; however, a Windows formatted iPod will work with both, Mac and Windows.

 

[Counterfit]

Okay 2 follow up questions
1. How do I turn off spotlight for external drives? I found preferences but it only has the list where I can order how the results are shown.

Click the Privacy tab in the Spotlight prefpane. I have it set to ignore my Backup partition on a FW drive (and it's still there after ejecting the disk many times) and any spam or junk email folders

2. When copying files over a network, can I connect the external HD to the PC and then transfer over that way or do I actually put the files onto the PC.

You should be able to mount the drive on your Mac over the network. Then just copy them to the drive.

 

[maxterpiece]

couldn't she just use the ipod as a hard drive and connect it to her dad's laptop along with the external hd, then copy all the files from the external HD to the ipod, then plug the ipod into the mac and copy the stuff?

more of a workaround than an answer, but it should work.

could also connect the drive to dad's laptop, network to his laptop, then directly access that drive through his laptop and copy it from the drive, directly to the mac through the network. This way you don't have to copy things back and forth.

 

[Sweetfeld28]

my first guess would have be [like others have said] that maybe Spotlight is doing its thing->indexing your drive.

or here are a couple of things i would check...

1. go in to your Applications folder>Utilities>Terminal. Open it, then type in top, and hit return. Top shows you a list of the top running applications, based on Processor usage/percentage. See if you can determine if Spotlight is running, if it is and is indexing it should have a high percentage.

2. another thing. i have a portable firewire 400 external laptop drive, which has a oxford 911 chipset, that i just recently formatted as FAT32. I did this because, i needed it to used on PCs and Macs for transportability of Graphics, Video, and other stuff. Anyway, i haven't had any kinds of problems with it at all. So, i am thinking it maybe how/or what you are using to copy the files.

So i would try and use some programs which copy what ever you want, to where ever you want [i mean a program that copys every single file, even the ones you can't see]. A good program that i use when doing backups is Carbon Copy Cloner. Try using this i think it should do the trick.

Good Luck

 

[newton213]

Is this going to be a semi-permanent backup, or just a temporary one? Because if it's the latter, why not just use the iPod as the backup drive, assuming it's a full sized iPod. I've done this more than a couple times before I got my external drive, and since you said you only need about 9GB....

 

[neocell]

Well with all this banter about spotlight, why not just check to see if it actually is indexing, and if it is, wait 10 minutes, 20 mins, whatever for it to be done, and then comeback and transfer the files.

 

[drb6]

my first guess would have be [like others have said] that maybe Spotlight is doing its thing->indexing your drive.

or here are a couple of things i would check...

1. go in to your Applications folder>Utilities>Terminal. Open it, then type in top, and hit return. Top shows you a list of the top running applications, based on Processor usage/percentage. See if you can determine if Spotlight is running, if it is and is indexing it should have a high percentage.

2. another thing. i have a portable firewire 400 external laptop drive, which has a oxford 911 chipset, that i just recently formatted as FAT32. I did this because, i needed it to used on PCs and Macs for transportability of Graphics, Video, and other stuff. Anyway, i haven't had any kinds of problems with it at all. So, i am thinking it maybe how/or what you are using to copy the files.

So i would try and use some programs which copy what ever you want, to where ever you want [i mean a program that copys every single file, even the ones you can't see]. A good program that i use when doing backups is Carbon Copy Cloner. Try using this i think it should do the trick.

Good Luck

I've checked about spotlight and it isn't running when i connect the drive or when i look at the contents. The backup is actually all my files from my dead pc laptop. So now i'm just planning moving all my stuff to the ibook.

okay so i'm gonna try to connect the external hd to my dad's laptop and network that with my ibook and see if it works. i'm doubtful though since the files are still on a drive that seems to be incompatible with the mac. otherwise i guess i'll try the ipod transfer which adds another step.

will be back soon, i hope

 

[drb6]

I'm happpy to announce that all went well. I connected the external HD to my pc and directly connected my mac to that PC and transferred over the files. It was an absolute breeze. It took about 3-4 hours for the 9gb to come over.

I haven't figured out why the HD didn't work with my mac directly but my dad said that he can reformat it in another windows format. Hopefully that will work so I can still backup my stuff on it.

Anyway, thanks to everybody for their help.
Spat solved!

 

[bigredsixer]

No, Mac formatted iPods will only work on a Mac; however, a Windows formatted iPod will work with both, Mac and Windows.

Got my Powerbook the other day. Decided to format my Ipod to Mac just to see what it was like. (I really dont care to use my Ipod on my Windows machine anyway...Itunes for PC sucks.) I think the Mac formated Ipod works much better than when I had it formated for Windows. Not in terms of sound quality obviously, but Ive noticed my LCD on my IPod shows up correctly now. In stead of longer named artists and songs not fitting...the Mac version makes the songs scroll across automatically so you can see the whole name. Much better.

 

[scarlco]

Yeah I thought it was weird, everything else I connected worked so smoothly. Now I'm a little worried about my iPod which I formatted for Windows, I gotta see how that goes later.

The HD says D.B.F. that might just be the case though. I'll check with my dad. Oh by the way I'm a girl

Okay 2 follow up questions
1. How do I turn off spotlight for external drives? I found preferences but it only has the list where I can order how the results are shown.
2. When copying files over a network, can I connect the external HD to the PC and then transfer over that way or do I actually put the files onto the PC.

Thanks

In dunno about the spotlight question, but you can copy files from an external drive on the PC without putting them on the PC itself. Just right-click on the external drive in "My Computer" and enable sharing for that drive. You should then be able to access it via the Mac over the network... OR just transfer the files to the mac via the PC, and you don't need to share anything.

EDIT: Sorry. Didn't realize there was a second page, where this has already been solved. Stupid me.

 

[rand()]

Ext2 support

M$ fights to the teeth to make NTFS incompatible with linux/BSD/OS X, mac os x has pretty much the best file system compatibility being able to read NTFS, write/read, UFS, HFS, FAT, FAT32 the only thing i want is EXT2/3 compatibility.

Well, I know it's not a solution directly from apple, but there is a project that has implemented EXT2 (and 3 minus journaling, thanks to backward compatibility by design) for OS X here (clicky). Plus, it seems it's written in Cocoa, which means a Universal Binary is just a checkbox + recompile away!

I would assume that ext2/3 being open source means it doesn't really matter if Apple does the implementation or not, the specs are out there to help X play nice with the file system should a programmer be daring enough to take on the challenge. What would be interesting is if the support were complete enough that you could run X off an EXT3 partition... very interesting...

-rand()

 

[sambo.]

Well that depends. JPG doesnt always mean small. If its high resolution or large in size it can be a 400mb file. I doubt thats the deal, but it is possible.

hehe, yuh i hadda do some big giclee's recently (28"x42" @ >2000dpi), the TIFF's were well over 10 gig while a single level 7 .jpg needed three cd's....

the USM took sooooooo long.....

 

[alex_ant]

You are kidding, aren't you? Like a Windows machine would read an HFS+ disk with no problems.

If Windows claimed to be able to read an HFS+ disk and couldn't, then yes, it would be Windows' fault, but they aren't claiming it can. FAT32 is an old and well-documented filesystem that Windows, Linux, and other OSes have no problems with, and the Mac shouldn't either, especially if Apple says specifically that OS X can read/write FAT32.