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WD My Book Essential Mac Compatible?

JosephDuffy

JosephDuffy

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 12, 2009
158
8
Great Britain
Hi,
I'm looking at a WD My Book Essential to backup my Mac and PC. I'll connect my Mac via USB 2, and PC via USB 3 (When I get a cheap PCI card).
It states on the website it's NTFS Formatted, so would need to be re-formatted to work on Mac.
However, I have Paragon NTFS installed on my Mac, which I believe is a driver for NTFS Drives.
So now my question is; Will I be able to use Time Machine to backup my Mac, and use the HDD to backup my PC? I'd also like to store a couple of misc. files on there, the odd movie etc, so can I make 2 or 3 partitions, so they don't "overlap".
I don't know how specific this will be to this HDD, so sorry if I'm too vague :)
Thanks,
Joseph Duffy
 
vnle said:
You could do FAT32 if you want to see the files on both mac and windows.
Click to expand...
That won't work for Time Machine and FAT32 has a 4GB file size limitation that may be a problem.

FAT32 (File Allocation Table)
  • Read/Write FAT32 from both native Windows and native Mac OS X.
  • Maximum file size: 4GB.
  • Maximum volume size: 2TB
NTFS (Windows NT File System)
  • Read/Write NTFS from native Windows.
  • Read only NTFS from native Mac OS X
  • To Read/Write/Format NTFS from Mac OS X: Install NTFS-3G for Mac OS X (free)
  • Some have reported problems using Tuxera (approx 33USD).
  • Native NTFS support can be enabled in Snow Leopard, but is not advisable, due to instability.
  • AirPort Extreme (802.11n) and Time Capsule do not support NTFS
  • Maximum file size: 16 TB
  • Maximum volume size: 256TB
HFS+ (Hierarchical File System, a.k.a. Mac OS Extended)
  • Read/Write HFS+ from native Mac OS X
  • Required for Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner backups of Mac internal hard drive.
  • To Read/Write HFS+ from Windows, Install MacDrive
  • To Read HFS+ (but not Write) from Windows, Install HFSExplorer
  • Maximum file size: 8EiB
  • Maximum volume size: 8EiB
exFAT (FAT64)
  • Supported in Mac OS X only in 10.6.5 or later.
  • exFAT partitions created with OS X 10.6.5 are inaccessible from Windows 7
  • Not all Windows versions support exFAT. See disadvantages.
  • exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table)
  • AirPort Extreme (802.11n) and Time Capsule do not support exFAT
  • Maximum file size: 16 EiB
  • Maximum volume size: 64 ZiB
 
So, if I use Mac to partition the drive, lets say 50:50.
I make the first half HFS+ (Mac OS Extended), and allocate that to Time Machine.
For the second half I make it NTFS. I can access this on Windows and Mac (After installing a driver), and I store music/movies on there, along with a backup of Windows using the supplied software.
Overall, that should work, right? :)
Thanks for the in-depth explanation, GGJstudios, helped a lot.
Thanks,
Joseph Duffy
 
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