External HD NTFS

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Ok so I have googled, read and youtubed it up for a day now and still haven't found my 100%

I have a 1TB exernal hard drive I had with me PC (vista) and it has around 400+gigs of file (music, pics, tv, movie, school papers, ebooks, pc programs, couple mac apps and so on). well how do i format the drive WITHOUT erasing it, keeping all my files. I have a "apple only" external that would fit everything but if i copy all the files to the "apple only" will it be f-d up from the PC files? And what to format it too because I need a PC/Mac external to go between the two, i have got different answers here too.

Does this make since to anyone? I need one external hard drive for PC/Mac use and my Mac only one (that one works perfect). I am working with a Mac Book OS X 10.5.6

I can take files off the 1TB HD but not add any, and most files coming off the 1TB are locked so too delete anything i have to get info, unlock than delete! urgh takes very long time with mass files.

Please help me. I have had the mac book now for less than a week and love it. minus this whole pc hard drive f-ing with me. :Angry-Tongue:
 

chscag

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I only know of one program that will convert NTFS back to FAT-32 and I'm not sure if it will work with a drive that large. I have used it to convert smaller drives with success but 1 TB is a different matter.

The name of the program is Partition Magic currently owned and distributed by Symantec.

Partition Magic Download - Partition Software - Partition Hard Drive | Norton PartitionMagic

Note that this is a Windows program which can be run from within Windows or direct from the CD.

Regards.
 
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What you should do is transfer files from windows NTFS drive over to you Mac Format drive. You can plug both into your laptop and drag and drop files to tha Mac Drive. It fill not F them up or ruin your other drive. Data is Data and wont corrupt it. NTFS is a format at which the data is saved. Once OSX opens that data and moves it to your other drive you shouldnt have a problem :)
Let me know how it works out.
 
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Thanks for those three ideas. I will try them tonight when i get back.
 
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Ok so I have googled, read and youtubed it up for a day now and still haven't found my 100%

I have a 1TB exernal hard drive I had with me PC (vista) and it has around 400+gigs of file (music, pics, tv, movie, school papers, ebooks, pc programs, couple mac apps and so on). well how do i format the drive WITHOUT erasing it, keeping all my files. I have a "apple only" external that would fit everything but if i copy all the files to the "apple only" will it be f-d up from the PC files? And what to format it too because I need a PC/Mac external to go between the two, i have got different answers here too.

Does this make since to anyone? I need one external hard drive for PC/Mac use and my Mac only one (that one works perfect). I am working with a Mac Book OS X 10.5.6

I can take files off the 1TB HD but not add any, and most files coming off the 1TB are locked so too delete anything i have to get info, unlock than delete! urgh takes very long time with mass files.

Please help me. I have had the mac book now for less than a week and love it. minus this whole pc hard drive f-ing with me. :Angry-Tongue:

You have three options:

1. Setup your Mac to be able to write to NTFS disks. There is a commercial solution (Paragon NTFS) and a free solution (NTFS-3G). I have not tried either one. This solution will not require you to do anything to the external drive.

2. Reformat the external drive to FAT32. This will require that you copy all of the data off of the drive and put it back after you complete the formatting. Also, this suffers from the file size limitation of 4GB.

3. Convert the partition from NTFS to FAT32 using a program like Partition Magic. I have not personally tried this approach either.

Personally (if you do not have the space to copy files to a new drive while reformatting), I would borrow or buy another drive to backup the data. I would not muck around with the format of a drive that contains valuable data.
 
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Another option would be to connect the PC formatted drive to the PC and share it on the network and access it from your Mac that way. File systems do not matter over a network.

A few facts to keep in mind:
NTFS - PC can read and write, Mac can read but not write (unless you have third party software).

Fat32 - PC and Mac can both read and write, but there are file size limitations such as 4GB max file size, only so many things can be in the root directory Click for a full list.

HFS+ - Mac can read and write, Windows will need third party software to use this drive.
 
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I'd say go for NTFS-3G ... i use it and works fine
It adds the ntfs filesystem capabilities to your mac, in your Disk Utility you have the option to partition disks in NTFS and when u plug in an ntfs disk, it mounts just like anything else

I had the same problem like you, except i needed to connect a Ex2 disk (for that i used e2fsprogs)
Now i have an external usb disk with NTFS on it and i can share files easily with all my windows friends

u can get ntfs-3f @ NTFS-3G: Stable Read/Write NTFS Driver

I think you also need MacFUSE to install third party filesystems to your system ... get it @ macfuse - Google Code
 
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Well thanks for the help guys. I was able to back up the NTFS drive and write it FAT-32. I am currently moving all files back with no problems. Thanks a lot for the help everyone.

If any new mac user needs to know how to format an external HD send me a message or check out you tube. great how tos there.
 
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Cant get ntfs-3g to work...

I'd say go for NTFS-3G ... i use it and works fine...

I installed MacFuse and ntfs-3g ... but my network IOMEGA (500gb) ntfs drive still tries to mount using samba ... and I get samba errors in the log

Jan 27 18:21:25 earnrics-MacBook NetAuthAgent[1582]: NetAuthAgent(1582,0xb00a1000) malloc: *** error for object 0xda028: Non-aligned pointer being freed\n*** set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug
Jan 27 18:21:25 earnrics-MacBook NetAuthAgent[1582]: NetAuthAgent(1582,0xb00a1000) malloc: *** error for object 0xda029: Non-aligned pointer being freed\n*** set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug
Jan 27 18:21:25 earnrics-MacBook com.apple.netauth.useragent[1582]: NetAuthAgent(1582,0xb00a1000) malloc: *** error for object 0xda028: Non-aligned pointer being freed
Jan 27 18:21:25 earnrics-MacBook com.apple.netauth.useragent[1582]: *** set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug
Jan 27 18:21:25 earnrics-MacBook com.apple.netauth.useragent[1582]: NetAuthAgent(1582,0xb00a1000) malloc: *** error for object 0xda029: Non-aligned pointer being freed
Jan 27 18:21:25 earnrics-MacBook com.apple.netauth.useragent[1582]: *** set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug

I have the MacFUSE icon in the Sys Prefs dialog, so I believe it install correctly ... but it doesn't seem to "activate" when I mount either the network IOMEGA drive or the drives on my networked PC (also ntfs)

Am I missing something?

FYI - I only get the errors in the SAMBA log when I mount/access the network drive, not the PC drive.

Rick
 

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