External HD Problem mac to pc

MisterBrico

Hi guys,

I just bought a 500 GB external HD that I planned to use for music and photos, as a back up and because i recently bought a Mac Book Air, It only has a small SSD so I thought I could keep my music on the external and use it between MBA and Windows PC.

So I plug it in to the MBA and it reads it no problem, I set it up for the time machine back up on there and it backs everything up.

I then plug it into the windows desktop, it recognises it is there, but not that it is external storage (it installed a driver but does not show up in my computer)

Any advice how to fix this? If need be I'll scrap the time machine back up (tell me how :rotfl:) because I mainly wanted it for the photos and music, I will buy a cheaper drive to do the TM back up for my work on the Mac.

Thanks in advance!

Drefsab

Do you know what format the external hard drive is formatted in? Mac and windows have drive formats the others dont understand so its possible your drive is formatted to an apple standard windows wont recognize.

gonzo127

although i dont know exactly it sounds as if the mac has formatted the drive in a format windows doesnt like so windows knows something is attached but cant read the information

PZH

You could maybe use a third party application on Windows like HFSExplorer?

Not tried it myself - but it appears to be read only (I assume for the drive and that contents can be copied to the Windows drive ?)

There seems to be more information here...
http://superuser.com/questions/1549/how-can-i-share-an-external-hard-drive-between-a-mac-and-a-pc

scottishblondie

For the Time Machine set up the drive has to have a Mac specific format, which Windows computers cannot read. Reformat the drive to FAT32, which can be read and written by both.

Depending on the size of the drive, you could divide it into 2 partitions, one in the Mac OS Journaled format, the other in FAT32, and use it for both TM backups and storing other stuff. You can use the "Disk Utility" in OS X to do all this.

Drefsab

If you plug it into the mac then run disc utility this will bring up a window showing all the drives you have, select the external drive from the list on the left hand side. Then choose the partition tab on the right hand side it should give you information about the format, dont change anything on this only look at what it tells you.

MisterBrico

Wow thanks for the swift replies!

I am a total newbie when it comes to macs, having used windows for years.

The format is Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive Journaled) so I guess it is in a mac only format

So next question is... how do I partition it so I can have about 100 GB for TM back up, and 400 Gb in FAT32?

Again all help appreciated, im pretty good with PC's but mac and external HD I am totally new to

scottishblondie

- Open the "Disk Utility" application, select your external drive from the pane on the left.
- On the central panel use the drop down menu to change "Volume Scheme" to 2 partitions
- Click on each partition which will be called "Untitled 1" and "Untitled 2" and change the settings on the right to what you want
- Click on "Apply" and wait til it's done!

almillar

You've thought of the best solution - a Mac partition and a PC partition. Just a note on the disk formats:
FAT32 - old, memory cards will use it, Mac and PC can use it, 4GB limit on file size, this may or may not be important to you. You can't use Time Machine on it. It doesn't have many security features.
NTFS - Comes from Windows NT/2000/XP onwards. More security features than FAT32, Mac can only READ from it, not WRITE to it.
MacOS (Extended, Journaled, case sensitive or whatever combination) Mac only, Windows will see the physical disk, but can't use the partition at all.
As mentioned above there are tools to help with all of this, and ways around, but for a drive you plug into both types, either FAT32 or 2 partitions is the answer.
Sharing the whole drive would be possible over a network if you left it attached to one of the computers...