Posted by Dan Borzynski on January 29, 2010 at 6:37 PM
I got asked a question earlier today which I have no idea what the correct answer is. Suppose you have an external hard drive (I am assuming that it is relatively recent) and that is has been used to store files from a Mac. I want to take that drive on vacation but the people I will be seeing only have Windows machines. If I upload my image files to the Windows machine, can I successfully upload those sames images afterwards to the external hard drive which I have been using with my Mac?
Vacation workflow:
Camera -> Windows machine -> Hard drive used with Mac -> Mac when I return.
I think the answer comes down to knowing whether the machines care about what OS wrote the files to the hard drive.
Depends on the format of the drive. I believe windows will not read Mac OSX journaled drives, which is the default formatting for a Mac. Macs, however, will read (and can format) a drive for windows. So... you could format a new drive as NTFS (I think that's what you want... worth double checking) on your mac before you go, and then use that one no problem for your proposed workflow.
Posted by Greg Vaughn on January 30, 2010 at 12:22 AM
To expand on what Guy said, Macs can _read_ NTFS-formatted drives, but they can't write (save files) to them. Windows machines can't deal with the Mac journal format. Windows and Mac OS computers can both read and write to drives formatted as FAT32.
As a corollary question, if I have images and video on an External Hard drive (preformatted NTFS) that has been connected to my PC, can I upload those photos and videos to a Mac without harming or reformatting the files? Sounds like a yes, but I wanted to confirm before I do it.
Posted by John Vaughan on January 31, 2010 at 10:51 AM
I am stumbling around with the drive format issue myself as I just purchased a 250gb LaCie portable disk drive last week. The drive came preformatted as a Fat32 but my Windows XP system is running on an NTFS drive for security reasons so I formatted the new drive to NTFS as well. I am currently working on Macs at school and need the ability to use this portable drive on both systems. UUgghh!
So what do I need to do at this point? Reformat the portable drive to Fat32? Will I be able to use the portable drive with my Windows system as well as the Mac?
Posted by Dan Baumbach on January 31, 2010 at 1:38 PM
When you say uploading, do you mean via the internet or direct connection to the computer. If you upload via the internet, the Mac should have no problems. For a direct connection (USB, firewire), other's here have said that Macs can read NTFS formatted drives but can't write to them so that should work too.
Discussion
8 repliesVacation workflow:
Camera -> Windows machine -> Hard drive used with Mac -> Mac when I return.
I think the answer comes down to knowing whether the machines care about what OS wrote the files to the hard drive.
Guy
So what do I need to do at this point? Reformat the portable drive to Fat32? Will I be able to use the portable drive with my Windows system as well as the Mac?
- Dan.