Using My Passport back and forth between a Mac and PC..help?

Lregracie · January 3, 2011, 11:38pm

One of my clients sends data to me using a My Passport external drive. I can access her files easily, but apparently do not have permissions to write back onto the drive to send her the fnished work.

Without reformatting the drive (which will make it inaccessible to her, if I read the posts correctly?), is there another way around this?

Thanks in advance (with fingers crossed!)

Lynn

Joe_S · January 4, 2011, 1:05am

I’m not a Mac guy but PizzaMatrix knows his stuff check out his posts in this thread http://community.wdc.com/t5/External-Drives-for-Mac/WD-My-Book-Elite-Using-on-a-Mac-amp-PC/m-p/92308#M1894 I think you need to install the NTFS-3G he’s talking about.

Joe

Lregracie · January 4, 2011, 1:15am

Thanks, I’ll check out his stuff.

I think if I install the NTFS-3G, then she won’t be able to access the info on the drive with her PC.

I’m very PC literate, and very Mac literate, but getting them to like each other is a new ball game for me : /

Thanks!

Lynn

ATJ777 · January 4, 2011, 3:03am

Lregracie wrote:

I think if I install the NTFS-3G, then she won’t be able to access the info on the drive with her PC.

NTFS-3G fully supports reading and writing NTFS disks with the Mac. I use it with my Mac and the data can be read fine on a PC.

The NTFS-3G thing is just the name of the driver - the disk will still be NTFS. See: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/ntfs3g.html

Lregracie · January 4, 2011, 3:22am

Awesome, thanks so much for taking the time to pst your reply! I will give that a try and (hopefully) my problem will be solved!

Thanks!

Lynn

Lregracie · January 4, 2011, 4:35am

I ended up having to download the trial for the commercial version, but it works just fine. For some reason the other version wouldn’t work. But, I am back in business, thank you SO much!! Yell if you ever need a photo retouched, I owe you one!

Lynn

ATJ777 · January 5, 2011, 1:43am

Lregracie wrote:

I ended up having to download the trial for the commercial version, but it works just fine. For some reason the other version wouldn’t work.

I’m not sure what you mean here. NTFS-3G is free from Apple donwloads. I haven’t seen a “commercial version”.

Lregracie · January 5, 2011, 1:53am

I tried that version, but kept getting error messages, telling me to hook the drive up to a Windows system, fix the the disc and try again. I did that (multiple times), and it still wouldn’t mount the drive.

This is what finally worked: http://www.tuxera.com/products/tuxera-ntfs-for-mac/

Of course I used the trial, but unless I Can figure out how to make the freebiw work, I’ll end up having to buy this one.

Anyway, problem solved for the moment, but still open for suggestions.

Thanks!

Joe_S · January 5, 2011, 2:19am

See if this is what you need http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/ntfs3g.html

Joe

Lregracie · January 5, 2011, 2:30am

I’ll save that and try it when she sends the drive back. I don’t have a way to test it right now.

Hopefully it will work, I’ve spent a small fortune in software lately!

Thanks!!

Joe_S · January 5, 2011, 2:31am

It was in the post by PizzaMatrix it was in bold letters instead of as a link.

Joe

ATJ777 · January 5, 2011, 3:10am

Lregracie wrote:

I tried that version, but kept getting error messages, telling me to hook the drive up to a Windows system, fix the the disc and try again. I did that (multiple times), and it still wouldn’t mount the drive.

How did you unmount the drive from the Windows system? If you didn’t use the “Safely Remove” icon in the System Tray, you will have problems,

Lregracie wrote:

This is what finally worked: http://www.tuxera.com/products/tuxera-ntfs-for-mac/

Of course I used the trial, but unless I Can figure out how to make the freebiw work, I’ll end up having to buy this one.

Anyway, problem solved for the moment, but still open for suggestions.

Ah, yes… I can now see there is a commercial upgrade available. The free version (download from Apple) is working fine for me (when I correctly unmount the drive from Windows). I may look at the commercial version, though, as it is meant to have performance enhancements.

Lregracie · January 5, 2011, 12:07pm

Let me know please, if you find it worth what they ask for it. Isn’t much, but pennies do ad up!

: )

ATJ777 · January 11, 2011, 3:49am

I did some testing and the commercial version is significantly faster, at least for writing.

I tested copying a larg file (20GB) from the internal drive to an external disk with NTFS over FW800 and it took up to 4 times longer with NTFS-3G than with the trial version from Tuxera. Similarly, copying 100 files totalling 1.2GB was around 3 times longer with NTFS-3G. In fact, I found that I was getting around the same times with the trial version of NTFS from Tuxera as I was to a HPS+ partition on the same drive.

Reading may be a different story but it is also harder to test.

Joe_S · January 11, 2011, 4:05am

Thanks for the feedback

Joe

Lregracie · January 11, 2011, 2:04pm

Thanks, you were both very helpful! I guess I’ll be paying for the commercial version.

:)

Bullzie · February 9, 2011, 2:18pm

There is another option here. I ran into this exact problem but there is a new format ( exFAT) that is the replacement for FAT32 that works natively with Mac and Windows. Mac OS X added exFAT support in version 10.6.5 on November 10, 2010. OS X 10.6.5 can read, write, and create exFAT partitions. It is also supported natively in Windows Vista SP1 and above but Microsoft has a Windows XP SP2 driver available. The big thing to not here is that exFAT does not have the same file size limitations as FAT32, it has the same file size limitations as NTFS. I have been running it for over a month now with my MacBook Pro and Win7 Laptop and on the systems at school without any issue at all and best of all it doesn’t require any paid software to make it work.

Bullzie

Lregracie · February 9, 2011, 2:28pm

Awesome, thanks for posting that info!

I finally convinced that client that dropbox would work for us, so I don’t have to remember to mail her HD drive back. (yay me!) But, I will definitely keep this info for future reference.

Thanks!

Lynn

Joe_S · February 9, 2011, 4:20pm

Thanks for the info.

Joe

ThePizzaMatrix · February 9, 2011, 11:34pm

Bullzie wrote:

There is another option here. I ran into this exact problem but there is a new format ( exFAT) that is the replacement for FAT32 that works natively with Mac and Windows. Mac OS X added exFAT support in version 10.6.5 on November 10, 2010. OS X 10.6.5 can read, write, and create exFAT partitions. It is also supported natively in Windows Vista SP1 and above but Microsoft has a Windows XP SP2 driver available. The big thing to not here is that exFAT does not have the same file size limitations as FAT32, it has the same file size limitations as NTFS. I have been running it for over a month now with my MacBook Pro and Win7 Laptop and on the systems at school without any issue at all and best of all it doesn’t require any paid software to make it work.

Bullzie

exFAT does work as a file system for both Windows and Macintosh, but only the most current systems are able to recognize that file system.

A Mac that runs 10.6.5 (Snow Leopard) needs a lot of updates, and a lot of Mac users run 10.5, so exFAT does no good for them. On Windows exFAT can only be recognized by Vista SP1 onwards. XP SP2 can work with exFAT as well, but it needs an additional update from Microsoft…

For a future generation exFAT may become the new universally standard FS (As FAT32 used to be)… But for now, integration is dim and relative.

However, if we are dealing ONLY with modern (And updated) computers, then yes, it is a perfect solution.