Lacie External hard drive. On mac and Pc?
Discussion
Hi, I am not sure as I do not own a Mac, but I would guess that you have formated it in the wrong format, probably NTFS on windows and I dont think the MAC will read this. I susspect it would need to be FAT or FAT32 for it work between both.
I am sure someone else will advise if i am wrong.
I am sure someone else will advise if i am wrong.
That sounds right. It's probably NTFS which the Mac won't read. You'll need to reformat it as FAT32 if you want both systems to be able to read it. Bear in mind that Windows XP will not format anything larger than 32GB as FAT32 (although it will read it) and that FAT32 only supports single files of up to 4GB.
Mac can do NTFS - but not without some additions.
See this article for more info. : http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/how-to-r...
See this article for more info. : http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/how-to-r...
marctwo said:
That sounds right. It's probably NTFS which the Mac won't read. You'll need to reformat it as FAT32 if you want both systems to be able to read it. Bear in mind that Windows XP will not format anything larger than 32GB as FAT32 (although it will read it) and that FAT32 only supports single files of up to 4GB.
Okay when i first formatted the Hard Drive it asked me if i wanted to format it with a partition for Mac, it only said 32gb of it would be mac compatible so i didn't do it. Have i understood that right or does it just mean I will only be able to copy a max of 32gb at any one time from my mac? If this is the case then i'll reformat it tonight with the partition.
AndyKH said:
Okay when i first formatted the Hard Drive it asked me if i wanted to format it with a partition for Mac, it only said 32gb of it would be mac compatible so i didn't do it. Have i understood that right or does it just mean I will only be able to copy a max of 32gb at any one time from my mac?
If this is the case then i'll reformat it tonight with the partition.
Which machine did you format this on? I understood you used your PC? Which version of Windows does it have?If this is the case then i'll reformat it tonight with the partition.
AndyKH said:
marctwo said:
That sounds right. It's probably NTFS which the Mac won't read. You'll need to reformat it as FAT32 if you want both systems to be able to read it. Bear in mind that Windows XP will not format anything larger than 32GB as FAT32 (although it will read it) and that FAT32 only supports single files of up to 4GB.
Okay when i first formatted the Hard Drive it asked me if i wanted to format it with a partition for Mac, it only said 32gb of it would be mac compatible so i didn't do it. Have i understood that right or does it just mean I will only be able to copy a max of 32gb at any one time from my mac? If this is the case then i'll reformat it tonight with the partition.
From wikipedia on resource forks
wikipedia said:
With Mac OS X 10.6, Apple changed the SMB protocol to be more compatible with Mac files that use resource forks. Specifically, Mac OS X 10.6 now writes the resource fork to an NTFS stream. In previous Mac OS versions (10.3, 10.4, and 10.5,) resource forks were accommodated through a system called “apple double,” in which the data fork was written as one file, and the resource fork was written as an entirely separate file preceded by a “._” naming convention. For example:
ExampleFile.psd would contain the data fork ._ExampleFile.psd would contain the resource fork
Earlier Mac OS X clients would recognize the presence of both files and “re-assemble” them, so that both the data fork and resource fork would be recognized on the Mac OS client that is accessing the file.
The complication is that default Mac OS X 10.6 clients no longer recognize the “._” resource fork files, which can create data incompatibilities among networks that contain a various array of Mac OS X client versions.
ExampleFile.psd would contain the data fork ._ExampleFile.psd would contain the resource fork
Earlier Mac OS X clients would recognize the presence of both files and “re-assemble” them, so that both the data fork and resource fork would be recognized on the Mac OS client that is accessing the file.
The complication is that default Mac OS X 10.6 clients no longer recognize the “._” resource fork files, which can create data incompatibilities among networks that contain a various array of Mac OS X client versions.
Edited by GhostyDog on Friday 5th March 13:55
Edited by GhostyDog on Friday 5th March 13:57
GhostyDog said:
That's correct, it's a limitation of FAT32 you cannot format a volume greater than 32GB, although it supports physical disk sizes up to 8 Terabytes.
I understood it was a limit of Windows XP as it was trying to get you to use NTFS instead. Other OS can format FAT32 larger than 32GB.AndyKH said:
Okay, so if i copy up to 32 gb from my mac then when i get home transfer the 32 gb from the mac partition onto the Pc partition would this work? As you can tell i'm not computer buff. Give me a camera and i'm happy as larry but cross platform data transfer blah blah blah i'm lost.
Nope you can create multiple 32 GB partitions on the drive up to your 500GB limit and add your data to them and they'll be accessible from both windows and mac. 
What version of Apple OS are you using?
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