Mac/Windows accessing each others files

This may be a dumb set of questions, but I'm trying to figure out what file system to use where. Currently I'm running a standard Windows network (3 hardwired Windows 7 machines) with all drives formatted NTFS. I have a total of 18 TB hooked up to these, with the bulk of it being external drives connected by eSata (in two TowerRAID boxes, for anyone that knows what those are).

I want to add an iMac into the mix.

When I connect the iMac to the network, will it see the shared NTFS drives on the Windows pc's? I believe the answer is yes, but it will see them as SMB (samba) shares, right? If I remember correctly, that means that access will be really slow, right? Worse yet, I believe there is also the 4gb filesize limit, but I could be wrong on that.

I'm also thinking of hooking up a RAID array to the iMac via Thunderbolt cable, and I believe I would want this formatted HFS+, to support the various Mac backup and other software. If I share those drives, will the Windows machines see them, too? Will it be the same SMB share type of thing?

Now, assuming I use bootcamp to run Windows on the iMac, at that point, the bootcamp Windows would not be able to see the HFS+ partition on the same drive, and the OSX side would not be able to access the Windows partion, right??

Next comes the Paragon software. Paragon NTFS running on the Mac will allow it to read/write to the Windows partition, right? And the Paragon HFS+ app running in Windows will allow it to access the Mac partition on the iMac, right?

Is that kind of the extent of it there, or are there any different methods of allowing all the different interactions (both network based and local to the iMac)?

Oh... I missed a question...
If I have exteral drives formatted HFS+ and connected by Thunderbolt, is there any way the iMac can access those drives when booted up in Windows? Even with Paragon installed, it's not going to know what to do with that Thunderbolt connection, is it?

I have a large mixed network here. I have never felt that the Windows shares using SMB on the Mac were any slower than using another windows machine to access the main windows system.

With Networking, the drive type on the other computer means nothing. All shared drives will show on the Mac and Windows if you set it up right.

If you have Windows on the iMac you can purchase MacDrive. It will give you full read/Write to any OSX formatted partition.

You already know about Paragon. But in the Network, nothing is needed.

With Windows on your iMac, if you use a VM, all the drives should show, but if you use Bootcamp (for speed), you would need MacDrive and Paragon to read OSX and Windows drives.

Hope this makes some sense as it's almost 3AM and I am TIRED!

Lastmboy said:

When I connect the iMac to the network, will it see the shared NTFS drives on the Windows pc's? I believe the answer is yes, but it will see them as SMB (samba) shares, right? If I remember correctly, that means that access will be really slow, right? Worse yet, I believe there is also the 4gb filesize limit, but I could be wrong on that.

Click to expand...

SMB shouldn't be any slower than any other networked file sharing. The only bottleneck here will be your networking which is independent of the sharing protocol.

As for the 4GB limit, that's a problem for FAT formatted drives. As it's implemented in Windows, the max file size for NTFS formatted filesystems is 16TB minus 1KB.

Glad Van answered that one. Was so tired I forgot to mention that. The only 4GB limits are FAT32 like Van said. Has nothing to do with the network.

ok. Thanks, guys. I knew the 4gb limit was with FAT32, but I wasn't sure what type of file format an SMB share would be seen as. From what you're saying, I guess it doesn't matter.

As for bootcamp Windows on the iMac, I'm guessing it's probably out of luck as far as seeing any Thunderbolt drives connected to the same iMac. I'm not aware of Microsoft releasing any Thunderbolt drivers. Is that about it, or would there be some way to make the Thunderbolt connected drives look like network drives?

but if you use Bootcamp (for speed), you would need MacDrive and Paragon to read OSX and Windows drives.

Click to expand...

dtravis, You did say you were tired and I guess the word WRITE is missing from the above post but it is not totally true that with Bootcamp you need extra software to read and write drives on the other system. I have just rebooted into Windows to confirm and it is no problem reading files from my OSX partition. I have just opened docx and doc files stored in the OSX partition in Windows OpenOffice and viewed various JPG, TIF and GIF files. In the other direction I have limited files stored on the Windows partition but have confirmed that when booted as a Mac I can read txt and graphic files from Windows. Also copying files from one partition to the other is no problem.

The only problem is writing from one partition to the other. For me this is a very rare problem as I avoid using Windows unless I absolutely have to (its bad enough having to use XP at work). For those odd occasions when I do need to save a document in Windows that I have opened from OSX and then modified I just save it to the Windows partition and when I next boot as a Mac just copy it back across. This happens so rarely it is not worth having additional software installed to overcome the WRITE limitation.

PS

My check that all this worked was somewhat delayed as when booting into Windows I had the usual ten minute wait while it "configured" all the updates it downloaded in the background the last time I used it. That's the great thing about Bootcamp. Occasionally it reminds you why you bought s Mac.

I will bring you all my Windows machines. Plug in any Mac formatted drive and show me Windows reading the drive leave alone writing.

Maybe Bootcamp installs some driver now. Not tried it in ages as I really have NO USE for Windows on a Mac, but Windows will not natively do anything with a Mac formatted drive.

OSX WILL READ NTFS, but not write to it. I figured most people knew that anyway.