I have an iMac 1GHz PowerPC G4 running OSX 10.3.9 I want to get an external drive. I'm considering the 80GB OWC Mercury Elite-AL 800 Pro 7200RPM Complete FireWire 800/400 External Solution (recommended in some other threads). I would also want to be able to use it with my PC. Will it work, and will it be simple to use to backup my data on my Mac? I want to keep it simple. Or is there something better than this? Thanks a lot.
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Will it work?
- Thread starter annielab
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I will work suject to the following limitations:
1) If formatted as FAT32, it will work on both PC and Mac, and support files up to 4GiB in size.
2) If formatted as HFS+, the Macintosh default file system, it will work with read and write support on the Mac. Read and write support on the PC will work only if MacDrive is installed, a third party shareware application.
3) If formatted as NTFS, the Windows default file system, it will work with read and write support on the PC. Read support will work out of the box on the Mac, and write support is possible through the use of MacFUSE by Google.
I recommend option 1, then option 2, then 3, in that order.
1) If formatted as FAT32, it will work on both PC and Mac, and support files up to 4GiB in size.
2) If formatted as HFS+, the Macintosh default file system, it will work with read and write support on the Mac. Read and write support on the PC will work only if MacDrive is installed, a third party shareware application.
3) If formatted as NTFS, the Windows default file system, it will work with read and write support on the PC. Read support will work out of the box on the Mac, and write support is possible through the use of MacFUSE by Google.
I recommend option 1, then option 2, then 3, in that order.
So thats what MacFUSE is for...
Is it easy to set up? Or am I going to run into lots of complications?
Most external drives I've seen are pre-formatted as FAT32.
For maximum compatibility, zero configuration, leave the drive as FAT32. Both the Mac and PC will be able to read/write w/o doing anything special.
If the drive is both FW and USB, and your PC lacks FW ports, no problem, connect it via USB on the PC and FW on the Mac.
Using HFS or UFS will make the drive unreadable by the PC.
The only benefit of using NTFS: it the drive is stolen, another PC will be able to read the drive, but the PC user will not have permissions to access the data. Even so, any Mac will be able to read from, but not write to, the drive without 3rd party software.
In short:
Fat32: no issues, plug it in, it works.
HFS/UFS: Can't be read by the PC without 3rd party software
NTFS: Secure, but cannot be written to by the Mac without 3rd party software.
MacFUSE is very easy to set up, but I found it to be quite slow writing data to the disk.