[Satcomer]

Originally Posted by nemac

With MacDrive, should I leave the drive with just one NTFS partition and still be able to write to it with the Mac? I want to use the external drive with TimeMachine. Will this work?

No. With MacDrive on the Windows' box you can format the drive MacOS Extended(Journaled). MacDrive on the Windows' box will make Windows XP/Vista read/write to that drive as if it was a native format. This way either machine can use the drive but the external still could be used as a Time Machine (because Time Machine needs MacOS Extended).

Disk Formats:

OS X: MacOS Extended(Journaled) : Macs read/write (native file format). The API's for this is open source in the public Darwin.

Windows XP/Vista: NTFS read/write (native file format): OS X CAN ONLY READ NTFS because Microsoft will not release API's for it.

Windows old format with 4G file limit (per file), FAT32. OS X through years of tinkering can read/write FAT32.


OS X is base on the open BSD Unix. This is why the makers of MacDrive can make such stable drivers for Windows XP/Vista to read/write Mac OS Extended (HFS+) formated drives. Microsoft DOES NOT release the APIs to anyone to read/write NTFS. Think DRM laws then you will grow up and understand Microsoft and their APIs are VERY restrictive! This with the continuing loss to open source in the server markets and Microsoft is in panic mode and are becoming MORE restrictive! So don't expect miracles in writing to NTFS formats soon.