Firewire drive - Windows and Mac

Angell · Joined: Sep 21, 2004 Posts: 44

Hi there Guys,

I have a firewire drive that I bought this last week when my pc died (during finals!!) I am trying to use it to back up everything on my hard drive from my dead pc. I put my hard drive in an external enclosure and attached it to my windows laptop. It makes me partition the firewire to use it. It offers me only NTFS to partition the drive. If it offered me Fat 32 I don't think I would be having these problems.

I can partition it on the mac just fine. i can partition it on the windows machine just fine.

But..

I can't use the firewire drive on either machine without having to make a new partition, delete the last one, and in that process delete everything I just backed up. Doesn't this defeat the whole idea of a backup drive if I am just deleting everything I just saved on the thing?

How can I partition it once - for mac and windows platforms - and be all set once and for all?

Thanks so much!
Angel

greyknight17 · Joined: Feb 03, 2003 Posts: 5651 Location: Brooklyn, NY

How did you format your drive?

Yes, the mac will have trouble with NTFS. It's best to use FAT or FAT32 instead. You should be able to do a Read-Only if you have OS X 10.3 or 10.4

Can you right click on that firewire drive in My Computer and go to Format? Does it have FAT32 under the File System drop down menu? If so, backup all your data to the computer's hard drive for the time being. Do the format...partition...etc. Then move the data back.

falliston

Hi. I don't know much about Macs, but couldn't you create 2 partitions and format one NTFS and one Mac?

Like NTFS and FAT32 for XP and 98 dual boot...

Angell · Joined: Sep 21, 2004 Posts: 44

On the windows laptop it only allows you to partition in ntfs.

On the mac laptop it just does its own thing in mac language.

There is no fat 32 option anywhere.

I can save my stuff on it in the windows pc - then come over to my mac - and it can see it - but I cant save anything to the firewire drive it just acts for access not read write.

If I save anything on my mac when i go over to my windows machine - it wont see anything at all and I have to repartition it all.

If i could partition the thing fat 32 it would probably work interchangably by theres no option anywhere...

RichNRockville

greyknight17 · Joined: Feb 03, 2003 Posts: 5651 Location: Brooklyn, NY

The suggestion made by falliston sounds good...try creating two partitions for it and see if it will allow you to use them separately for Windows and the Mac.

If not, try giving this a try. Backup your data on that drive if you still have any left....Unplug the grey/ide cable for your original hard drive in case you make a mistake here. Get a Windows 98 bootdisk ready. Plug in your firewire drive and insert the floppy diskette. Power on the computer and let the Windows 98 floppy boot up the machine (change the bios if necessary to boot from floppy if it doesn't startup). Use the fdisk command and partition/format the drive. It will be FAT32. Once that's done with the partitioning/formatting, restart your computer (ctrl+atl+del) and take out the floppy drive. Copy some Windows data to that firewire drive. Then take it to the Mac and try copying the data. See if files from both Windows and Mac are still intact and that you can see all the data on both ends.

goretsky

Hello,

Have you checked with the manufacturer of the external FireWire (IEEE-1394) hard disk drive enclosure to see if they offer a special utility to format the hard disk drive installed inside it?

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

TranceWarp · Joined: Oct 03, 2003 Posts: 30

Another possibility is to purchase a program such as PowerQuest Partition Magic or Acronis Disk Partition Manager and create the partition that way.

Angell · Joined: Sep 21, 2004 Posts: 44

I got a hold of partition magic.

I created two seperate partitions. Both are fat 32.
one is labeled mac, one is windows. for each os.

When on the mac machine I can not modify the windows partition - which is fat 32. I would really like to be able to save things to this paritition and edit things on there just as I do on the mac parition, while using my mac computer. Is there a way to make this option available?

I had no idea firewire drives were going to be this complicated! I just want to back up all my stuff from my harddrive so I can fix my motherboard - but I want to be able to access it on my mac laptop and my windows one.

*cries* Crying or Very sad

Angell · Joined: Sep 21, 2004 Posts: 44

Here's something irritating..

On the windows partition.. I saved some things - I went over to my mac and I can see the stuff - I can access it - But I cant delete it off of the partition - because I dont have sufficent privledges...

on the windows laptop I set the partition to allow all users to share and have full rights.. what else can I do in order to allow me on my mac to edit this information??

Thanks,
Angel

goretsky

Hello,

Which version and service pack level of Microsoft Windows are you running on the Windows-based notebook computer?

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky