External HD MS/Mac compatible?

[lansup1]

My boss purchased a 120Gb exteral HD with USB & Firewire ports. No problems with getting my XP PC to recognise the device (or the bosses Win 2000 PC) but he can't get his iMAC at home to work with it. Cause it don't recognise the file system. Naturally he wants both machines to recognise the device, not one or the other. He wants me to get it to work with both but I ain't go no experience with the Apple..

Is it possible?

 

[chillwolf]

Yes it is possible. What is the file system of the hard drive? If it is NTFS then the mac will not see the drive.

Mac's will see a FAT32 drive.

I had the distinct displeasure of working with Macs and PCs on the same lan in a photo/video shop. There are some pretty nasty quirks when moving data between the 2 os's. If you stick with FAT32 it will help with alot of problems.

Best bet whould be to move the data and reformat with FAT32 then drop all of the data back on the drive it should clear your problems up.

 

[sjonnie]

How come our network drives are NTFS and still seen by Mac and PCs then?

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/myanandtech.html?member=114979" target="_new">My PCs</A>

 

[Crashman]

I believe it's because networks rely on the local system to convert the the "file system" to raw data.

Look, a Windows 98 machine can read networked drives from an NTFS system, but pop that drive in the Win98 machine and the OS won't read it.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[lansup1]

Thanks for the info. I had it on NTFS but I've reformatted the drive to FAT32 & will attack the bosses iMAC soon. Hope it works...

 

[chillwolf]

I highly suggest when you attack his Mac use something large like a 20 pound sledge. I find the smaller hammers while quite satisfying can wear you out pretty quick. I few good swings with the sledge and job complete.

Good luck.

 

[chillwolf]

Crashman just about hit it on the nose. The USB drives are using a different communication protocol.

In the networked drives the OS of the workstation has to rely on the redirector program in the OS to use the drives. The program sits between the workstation operating system and the NOS protocol stack and listens for application calls made to any of the mapped network drives.

For example an application user is attempting to save a file on a network drive. The user prompts the application to save the file on a network file volume that the NOS has mapped to the DOS drive I:. The application makes a call to the workstation operating system to complete the required file save operation. The redirector program recognizes that the application is attempting to access a network drive and steps in to handle the required data transfer.

hmm that went a little long but hopefully it helped. it all boils down to the way the drives are communicating.

 

[pat]

put simpler, you dont read a file on a network, you ask for the data...that is why they call that a server...network drives are just virtual device, just like virtual cdrom or dvd

-Always put the blame on you first, then on the hardware !!!