Trouble making aliases..

[jdfwarrior]

Ok I am having trouble creating aliases to some folders that I have. I have a theory of what the problem MAY be but I'm not 100% sure so I wanted to get an opinion from someone who would probably know more about a Mac.

The folders that I am attempting to make aliases to are both folders residing on an NTFS partition. Does that create an issue? I am able to create an alias to a folder residing on my Mac Mini's local hard drive, but my external drive, nor a network share to my desktop. Is the fact that they are NTFS partitions the root of my problem? It doesnt even give me the option to create an alias, its just greyed out. If this is the issue, what partition type should the drive be and is that partition type something that is somehow readable via Windows XP? I am basically wanting to do the same thing that I have read several other people doing.. I want to keep all of my movies/tv shows/music on an external drive that will remain plugged into my mini and use it as somewhat of a media center attached to my tv. I want to make an alias to the respective folders and place them in my home folder so that I can access these files and play them through Front Row.

Any suggestions or ideas?

 

[Nero Wolfe]

OS X has read-only support for NTFS. So, that would be why you can't create an alias there. I don't even know if you can create an alias on an HFS drive to something on NTFS. Anyway, the file system you want is Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Obviously, reformating the drive in question will erase all data. If you need interoperability with Windows, you'll have to use FAT32 (ick).

When I switched to Mac one of the things I had to do was backup my large external NTFS/FAT drives, reformat and restore. Not fun and I had to borrow external drives to do it but worth it in the end.

 

[jdfwarrior]

OS X has read-only support for NTFS. So, that would be why you can't create an alias there. I don't even know if you can create an alias on an HFS drive to something on NTFS. Anyway, the file system you want is Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Obviously, reformating the drive in question will erase all data. If you need interoperability with Windows, you'll have to use FAT32 (ick).

When I switched to Mac one of the things I had to do was backup my large external NTFS/FAT drives, reformat and restore. Not fun and I had to borrow external drives to do it but worth it in the end.

I think what I am going to do is, I bought a new external enclosure today, and a new hard drive, I'm going to format it and do whatever partition type OSX recommends, and then share that drive over the network. Then go back and copy everything from my windows box across the network to the other hard drive. Being a samba share, there shouldnt be any problems with this, right?