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  • External Firewire drives (slightly OT)

    Posted by Chris Bové on June 15, 2006 at 1:52 pm

    Moo,

    Editing with Adrenaline HD 2.2.3 on a Windows XP system. Using external firewire drives as a way of drag/drop file sharing between our system and the Mac OSX systems used by out-of-house graphics and audio people. Drives were formatted for windows, but I don’t remember how (Fat32, etc).

    Their Macs can read them just fine, but cannot write to them. Also tried one of their LaCie drives which was formatted by a Mac, and I couldn’t even detect the drive.

    Just called the Apple store and heard one of the strangest things. They sell LaCie drives and said in order for BOTH Windows and Mac systems to be able to write/rewrite to the drives, they need to be partitioned – one side for Mac and one for PC… thus, you drag and drop each file twice(???). Yuck!

    Hope there’s a better way? Thanks sooo much in advance if you have any ideas!

    ______
    /-o-o-\
    \`(=)`/…Pixel Monkey
    `(___)

    Just finished editing “Frank Lloyd Wright’s Buffalo” – see it on PBS Sept 4, 2006 at 10pm.

    Chris Bové replied 19 years, 11 months ago 3 Members · 3 Replies
  • 3 Replies
  • Jon Zanone

    June 16, 2006 at 11:41 am

    Well, first off, I think you got a 16 year old on the phone. Did his voice crack when he answred?

    That being said, I’ve got a very old (7 years) Q-Drive fire wire drive I use routinely with no problems. I also use an HP USB drive for the same thing…. I did format both in a PC. I remember from the pre Win2k / OS9 days it seemed to help Windows recognize it was a drive. OSX puts a couple of files on there, but I’ve not had problems… Maybe if you format it on a PC?

    Jon

    “The Almighty tells me He can get me out of this mess. But He’s pretty sure you’re F%$#*D!”

  • Dave Schweitzer

    June 17, 2006 at 2:28 pm

    I’ve hit this one, too. The Windows file system that can be read but not written to is called NTFS.
    If writing to the drive on OSX is something you’d like to see, and if the drives are not to be used as media drives on OSX for , then the quickest way to go is to format the drive to FAT32. It’s been so long I can’t remember how to specify the format on a PC, but using OSX open the drive utility, select the drive from the panel on the left (the drive, not the associated volume) go to Erase and select MS-DOS File System. Command-I shows the format as Macintosh PC Exchange (MS-DOS). The drive will now show up on both systems.
    FAT32 format is less responsive on a mac, so using the drive with this format as a media drive is asking for dropped frames, but being able to consolidate/export to it and walk it back to the PC room is convenient.

    btw, I’ve read using a program called Macdrive on the PC will format and translate the mac drive well enough that it can be used as a media drive on both systems. Using Macdrive under XP, the drive gets formatted Mac & can be seen on the PC – mounts and can be written to/read from. It also performs as normal on a mac, allowing for full-speed writing/reading.

    Geek Out,
    Dave

  • Chris Bové

    June 21, 2006 at 4:51 pm

    Yep, here’s my result:

    Use Start/Windows Administrative Tools/Disk Management to format ieee drive of any size into partitions using FAT32 formatting (32gigs maximum for each partition). Just tested it and drag/drop works fine with both platforms. When partitioning, any partition larger than 32 gigs is only allowed NTFS formatting, which is visible but not writable by Macs.

    Thanks for the help!

    ______
    /-o-o-\
    \`(=)`/…Pixel Monkey
    `(___)

    Just finished editing “Frank Lloyd Wright’s Buffalo” – see it on PBS Sept 4, 2006 at 10pm.
    (Yes, that is Labor Day)

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