OR getting your MAC to do what Windows XP should be able to ...
I think this might be useful to switchers, especially those who begin to really appreciate the Aqua interface and all things OSX.
------
We have recently switched to MAC OSX (using a 2ghz Macbook) for film editing and I am sick of Windows shortcomings and flakey behaviour.
The problem was we had an 80gb Freecom external drive, pre-formatted as NTFS (of course). We are increasingly using our Macbooks, but need to share JPG files, MS Office docs etc with a clients PC systems (and our own too). The external drive is essential for when we are onsite at the clients office (all Windows PC's).
The problem we had with the existing configuration of the Freecom USB 2.0 drive was that we could only update it from Windows XP. We could only read it from our MACS.
Anyway, here is a log of what happened over a period of a week.
Clearly the ext HD needed reformatting to FAT32 (as MAC's can write to this file system). So I tried reformatting the 80gb freecom via Windows to FAT32. Firstly this wasnt possible in the usual control panel utility as NTFS was the only option here. The help said it must be done via the command line (i.e. DOS). However, this failed on the disk size (FAT32 limited to 32gb). Great. I could have used a partitioning tool (not supplied with Windows XP) to make it into 3 virtual drives but that would have made using the disk cumbersome.
I contacted Freecom support who sent me a link to a very laborious procedure (not theirs - it was an unverified site), involving around 7 or 8 steps using 2 different (downloadable) EXE files to allow the disk to be formatted as FAT32 (once again via DOS). I am quite experienced with Windows but I wasnt happy with attemping this for many reasons, but mainly I thought it must be easier than this.
So I looked at the MAC disk utility, erased the disk, then formatted to MS-DOS and lo and behold I have a FAT32 disk of 80gb. This took about 5 minutes, with no downloads of potentially suspect programs.
We now have a very useful 80gb external drive that happily accepts read & write access from our MAC's and PC's.
WARNING - make sure your move all your data to another location before using this procedure as the ERASE via the MAC disk utility does exactly that.
For me, this has highlighted that Apple helps users do what we want and Microsoft forces users to do what they want.
Cheers
Eric
Remember - its okay to right click
I think this might be useful to switchers, especially those who begin to really appreciate the Aqua interface and all things OSX.
------
We have recently switched to MAC OSX (using a 2ghz Macbook) for film editing and I am sick of Windows shortcomings and flakey behaviour.
The problem was we had an 80gb Freecom external drive, pre-formatted as NTFS (of course). We are increasingly using our Macbooks, but need to share JPG files, MS Office docs etc with a clients PC systems (and our own too). The external drive is essential for when we are onsite at the clients office (all Windows PC's).
The problem we had with the existing configuration of the Freecom USB 2.0 drive was that we could only update it from Windows XP. We could only read it from our MACS.
Anyway, here is a log of what happened over a period of a week.
Clearly the ext HD needed reformatting to FAT32 (as MAC's can write to this file system). So I tried reformatting the 80gb freecom via Windows to FAT32. Firstly this wasnt possible in the usual control panel utility as NTFS was the only option here. The help said it must be done via the command line (i.e. DOS). However, this failed on the disk size (FAT32 limited to 32gb). Great. I could have used a partitioning tool (not supplied with Windows XP) to make it into 3 virtual drives but that would have made using the disk cumbersome.
I contacted Freecom support who sent me a link to a very laborious procedure (not theirs - it was an unverified site), involving around 7 or 8 steps using 2 different (downloadable) EXE files to allow the disk to be formatted as FAT32 (once again via DOS). I am quite experienced with Windows but I wasnt happy with attemping this for many reasons, but mainly I thought it must be easier than this.
So I looked at the MAC disk utility, erased the disk, then formatted to MS-DOS and lo and behold I have a FAT32 disk of 80gb. This took about 5 minutes, with no downloads of potentially suspect programs.
We now have a very useful 80gb external drive that happily accepts read & write access from our MAC's and PC's.
WARNING - make sure your move all your data to another location before using this procedure as the ERASE via the MAC disk utility does exactly that.
For me, this has highlighted that Apple helps users do what we want and Microsoft forces users to do what they want.
Cheers
Eric
Remember - its okay to right click
