# MY External hard disk....



## bunsak (May 4, 2007)

Dear All,

I have one external hard disk (Connectland), but every time I connect it with my mac I can only read it. What can I do to make it read and write?

Thanks with best Regards,
Bunsak


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

How is it formatted? If it's NTFS then you can't write to it. First we need to know if you need it to work with both Windows and Macs, or if it's just for Macs. Either way, you are going to need to copy all the files off the disk and reformat it to work in the way you need.


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## bunsak (May 4, 2007)

Dear Sinclair_tm,

Thanks for your help.

Is it meant I have to format it in NTFS format? yes, this one wok on both platform MAC and PC. Is there other way that I can make it work? what happen if I don have PC to format this hard drive? 

Anyway, thanks for your help.

Regards,
Bunsak


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

No, you do not want it NTFS, as that is most likely what the problem is. Macs can not write to NTFS, only Fat32 or older. But there are some problems with that, as Microsoft will only allow versions of Windows that support Fat32 to only go to 32gig. There may be some builds of Windows 98SE that can format it up to 127gig, but they are rare. There are some 3rd party apps that can format the whole disk in Fat32, but I don't know what they are. You could also try to use the Mac to format it with Disk Utility, but I have never tried on a large disk, so I don't know if Apple followed Microsoft's 32gig limit. What ever you do, make sure you have the drive backed up, as changing the format will completely erase the disk. Also, with Fat32, you can not have any files larger then 4gig in size, or they will become unreadable. So, if this disk is used for video editing, you have to do something else.


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## bunsak (May 4, 2007)

it sound a bit complicated with mac, but I like it. Y Mac only support with fat32? why they not build to NTFS like window?

One more thing that I wanna about which is the best application that I use to communicate between mac and pc on the networK, as now I'm trying to use Dave Browser, but I'm out of lincence now. Do you know any best program for it?

Anyways, thanks for your help...

I'll keep in touch.


Best Regards,
Bunsak


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

The Mac has it's own file system for it's hard drives, but Microsoft won't make Windows drivers to read them. Apple would make Mac drivers to read and write NTFS if Microsoft would share the info, but they have kept it closed, so no one but Microsoft knows how it really works. There are people that have done their best to reverse engineer the file system to allow you to write to NTFS disk, but they are buggy, and I don't recommend them. As for talking between the Mac and Windows, if Windows is XP Pro or Vista, you don't need any application, as they talk together quite well, I do it all the time. How do you need them to communicate? Let us know and we can tell you how to set it up.


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## bunsak (May 4, 2007)

Now I understand more clear about the NTFS on mac already, but what I want to know more about the communication between MAC and PC is: I want to have one folder call Public which is stored on PC computer and I want both mac and pc can read and write on those folder, what can I deal with this?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thanks with best Regards,
Bunsak


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

I guess it's time for me to sit sown and make a step by step Mac-Windows networking how-to/article. I'm busy with school, but give me a couple of days and I should have something.


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## FredT (Nov 16, 2007)

Hi there,

Hooray for the networking article, I would like to read it.

And as for the hard drive formats, here is a really simple explanation if you are confused.

HFS+ is for Mac
NTFS is for Windows
FAT32 is for both

That's it. If you need it to work on BOTH Mac and Windows, choose FAT32. If you are ONLY going to be using it on Mac, choose HFS+. That is the bottom line.

You can format disks as FAT32 as large as you want in Disk Utility with the Mac. I have a hard drive with a 40 gig FAT32 partition for sharing between Mac/Windows and I gave the rest to Mac with HFS+ for my video editing, because like sinclair said, you can only make files up to 4 gigs with FAT32.

Good luck


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## Mr_Chrisby (Apr 8, 2008)

Heya, i've just switch from pc to mac and i need to reformat my hard drive. That is something of which i have no idea. Help!


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

Is this an external hard drive? And will it only be on the Mac, or will you use it with Windows as well?


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## Mr_Chrisby (Apr 8, 2008)

Yer, sorry some info would of helped!! It's external, i might partition it later but for now think fat32 might be an idea.


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

After making sure that everything you want to keep is off the drive, open the "Disk Utility" in the "Utility" folder in the "Applications" folder. Now select the disk icon in the left pane, and then the "Erase" tab in the main window. In the pull down menu select "MS-DOS File System" and then click the erase button. Now you can use the disk on Macs and WIndows PCs.


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## Mr_Chrisby (Apr 8, 2008)

Thank you very much buddy. Thats most helpful. Laters.


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