copy files to/from my win partition

Y

yogert909

Registered
when I try I get an error that says "...cannot be modified". Info says the volume is read only. Can I change this or set up a public folder? Can I do this in osx or in xp?

Thanks
 
Unfortunately, the only way to do this is to probably repartition and reinstall or use MacDrive. The problem is that only Microsoft operating systems can write to NTFS. Other operating systems can only read to it because Microsoft has a tight grip on the specifics of NTFS. Because of this, the support for NTFS had to be reverse-engineered without violating their patent on it. So as of now, there's only read-only support. While Linux does have the option to write to it, it's still considered dangerous since it can corrupt the partition. So because of this, Apple decided to just have it read-only to prevent damages to NTFS partitions.

Now, for my suggestion: you can repartition the Mac so that you have one Mac HFS+ partition, one Windows NTFS partition, and then a third partition that's formatted FAT32. This FAT32 partition can be used as a storage partition in order to move things back and forth. Thankfully, Macs and other operating systems can write to FAT32 safely.

Or, you can purchase MacDrive and run that from your Windows install in order to copy files from the HFS+ partition.
 
thanks nixgeek, since I'm just using xp a tiny little bit, I think I'll just repartition a fat32 and install xp there.

Thanks for the info
 
The problem with doing that is that then you lose the added security that NTFS gives you when running Windows. FAT32 isn't as robust when it comes to users and permissions. This is why I recommended one partition for OS X, one NTFS partition for XP, and one FAT32 partition for transfering files between the two.
 
Thanks for the concern. You actually gave me an idea I think I'll try, which is using an external fat32 usb drive as the swap drive. Would be great if that works. Otherwise, I don't have much space to spare for multiple partitions on this computer as it's a macbook. I really just need to convert some 3dstudio max files to use in other programs and most likely will be deleting the xp partition in a few weeks.

Thanks again as I'm pretty stupid when it comes to pc issues.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top