Mac Files for Windows Machines


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here is the deal. I work from home for my company. I do 98% of the design work. I use a mac (ignore my sign thats my gaming machine) for all of my work. Now of course I share through FTP and email them files all of the time so I know obviously sharing files is not a problem.

With that being said I have to go out and buy an External Hard Drive (more than likely USB) to copy over my 40 gigs worth of work for the year of 2003 in which I am going to pass along to a fellow co-worker for him to include in our work Windows based "server" machine. Server being used metaphorically as it is just really a comp that will store everyone's work in the company not just my own.

My question is a simple one but one I am not 100% sure of. Do I have to format the drive in any special way to pass it along so he can read it on a Windows machine? If so how do I have to format it?

Since I do use a Windows machine as well I know my format on my particular comp is NTFS, and is it the same for my mac or a relevant or equal to file formatting? I just need a hard drive that will be cross platform and I am wondering if that is the case out of the box or do I have to do something special?

I am in a crunch for time and if my Windows machine was not taken apart completely right now I would just plug in one of My External Hard Drives from my mac and just simply see if it worked, but I am under the gun here to get this to them by 1 today which includes going out and buying the drive and copying the files and driving it to them.

Also anything else I should keep in mind for the files themselves besides the obvious like naming files not using "mac os only" special characters, etc?

Thanks in advanced.

DL

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Your best bet would be to format the external drive as FAT32 on the Windows machine. The Mac will read and write to that just fine. The Mac will read (but not write) to NTFS. The Windows machine will not read or write to HFS+ (the Mac's native format) without a third party utility.

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I would get a drive that is formatted for windows as Macs have no problem seeing windows formatted drives.

Also make sure that when you save files to the Drive, that you remember to include the file extension too!

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Cool thank you both for the speedy response.

It looks like i may have to put my windows comp together asap so i can format the drive to FAT32. i have never done that since I have only used NTFS but I do know how to format a drive so Im sure I can figure it out no problem at all as it is probably just an option when formatting. Easy enough.

Beautiful and thanks again for the quick replies!!

and also ncoday for sure the file's extensions are there as well (Y) but thanks for that heads up

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hrm ...correct me if i'm wrong, but when you put in a hd into a mac and format/use it a pc cant read it afterwards. a friend told me that he could read my pc's hds but afterwards i would'nt be able to read them anymore?!

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hrm ...correct me if i'm wrong, but when you put in a hd into a mac and format/use it a pc cant read it afterwards. a friend told me that he could read my pc's hds but afterwards i would'nt be able to read them anymore?!

ill let you know in about 2-3 hours once i give it a go. I am going to see if as timdorr suggested if i can format it to FAT32 using disk utility on my Mac. Once i have successfully done it I will post how I have in case anyone needs to cross this bridge in the future themselves (Y)

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no FAT32 option for formating in Disk Utility.

there is an MS-Dos and UNIX format, but i am not 100% sure either of those formats can be read on XP. does anyone happen to know if either of those options are cool for XP for sure or no?

i am going to go post in the window's hardware hangout and see if anyone can help me over their, because when i plug in the drive on my windows machine the only format I can do is NTFS which is not kosher as we all know...

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I think that the MS-DOS format is Fat32, my friend has a firewire/usb 2 drive that he uses on windows and os x, so I know it is possible, but he might have macopener (HFS driver for windows) or something on his PC...

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MS-DOS is FAT (at least). If you can make the partition larger than 2gb then it's FAT32.

I can't say for sure which one it is: i've never tried to directly mount anything larger than a 512mb flash drive.

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