[Ti] Cross Platform External HD

[Lee Wilmeth]

Lee

Lee Wilmeth, Computer Consultant
5043 E. Roy Rogers Rd
Cave Creek, AZ 85331
cell 480-332-3243
hm 602-288-8973
iChat or AIM ID    leewilmeth at mac.com
www.wilmeth.net
On Apr 14, 2004, at 6:14 AM, Dick Grable wrote:

>> Here is my dilemma, since it is possible to access documents through
>> cross platforms in a LAN,

Yes, you can put the drive on the PC, share it, and mount the drive on 
the mac using smb.

>> is it possible to connect a Mac OS extended
>> format external HD to a windowz PC?
>

Yes, but you have to purchase software to let the Windowz PC see the 
hard drive. A better solution is to use your mac to format the drive 
with Apple's Drive Utility as an MS-DOS partition. It will format the 
drive as a FAT32 partition that WinXP can mount, see and write. And the 
Mac can mount, see and write.

Alternatively, you can do 2 partitions, format one as Extended Mac, one 
as MS-DOS and the mac will see both, but the PC will only be able to 
mount the MS-DOS partition.

Also, WinXP can only make 32GB partition as FAT32. Anything bigger is 
NTFS, which the mac can mount, see, read, but not write too.

The only problem you will have with a FAT32 formatted drive is the file 
name size limits, which I can't remember, but that always trips me up 
with my MP3 files. Too long of name gets truncated, or if the file is 
nested in too many folders, it won't copy because the path name is 
longer than 255 characters. And this problem is on the PC not the mac.

Good luck with whichever method you choose.