External hard drive

After switching to an iBook, I still had a 111 gig hard drive which contained a lot of important archives as well as my music collection. I purchased an external enclosure and, with the advice of some on this forum, managed to successfully make the drive FAT32 so that it could be seen and written to by both PC and Mac.

The enclosure itself has 2 firewire and 1 USB connections. Here's the problem.

Both PC and Mac will pick up the device and see it as a drive. The Mac can read and write with no problem whatsoever. The PC can read and behaves as if it is writing, but when I put the drive back on the Mac, I can see nothing the PC supposedly copied over to it. I having to burn nearly a gig's worth of data to cd's today as a result of this mess-up.

If the PC is not going to be able to handle this, would I just be better off converting the drive to Mac's native format (something about journaled) and forgetting about cross-use with a PC altogether?


If it make any difference, I connect the drive to my Mac via firewire and to the PC via USB 2.0 (not at the same time, of course!).

hmm... I don't know how to solve this problem regarding your hard disk.

But i wonder, how come you don't network both the PC and Mac together? It's a simple task and only takes 5-10 mins. This way you can save yourself a CDR and have your PC write directly to the Mac's HD.

You can achieve this either by regular networking using the Mac's built-in RJ-45 or via Firewire, and maybe USB. Not sure how easy it is using the later, but firewire is straight forward.

To transfer files using FireWire:


1. Shut down the first computer and leave the second computer on.

2. Connect the two computers using a 6-pin to 6-pin FireWire cable. (If both computers have higher-speed FireWire 800 ports in addition to the standard FireWire 400 ports, you can use a 9-pin to 9-pin cable with the FireWire 800 ports to transfer data at higher speeds.)

3. Start up the first computer while holding down the T key.

A disk icon for the first computer appears on the desktop on the second computer. Drag files to and from the disk to transfer them.

4. When you finish, eject the first computer's disk by dragging its icon to the Trash.

5. Push the power button on the first computer to shut it down and disconnect the FireWire cable.

Click to expand...

What is journaling?
When journaling is enabled on a hard disk, a continuous record of changes to files on the disk is maintained in the journal. If your computer stops because of a power failure or some other issue, the journal is used to restore the hard disk to a known good state when your computer restarts.

If you install Mac OS X version 10.3 on a newly formatted HFS Plus hard disk, journaling is enabled. If you upgrade to Mac OS X version 10.3 from an earlier version of Mac OS X, journaling is not enabled. It's a good idea to turn journaling on in most cases.

To turn journaling on:

1. Open Disk Utility, located in Applications/Utilities.
2. Select the disk or volume in the left column of the Disk Utility window.
3. Click Enable Journaling in the toolbar.

source: Apple+? (mac help)

Click to expand...

The PC I am using is in the computer lab on my campus. I use it because they have faster download speeds than my home connection. The administrative rights are limited and altering the network connections are not allowed.

Is your Mac a PowerBook? if so, then you could take it to school with your along with a firewire cable. Assuming your school's computer has firewire. And network the two. No need to edit the network setting on the host system.

You'll need to restart your PowerBook while following the instructions given above. The Mac will see the host system and appear on the desktop as an server or or network drive.

I will remember your post for future reference when I encounter a PC to connect to, such as my parents' for example, but in the meantime I struck out again. The lab computers don't have firewire.

as i said... you could use USB to USB, but i have no idea how to... maybe someone here might know... i think you need a special cable. Stupid USB.


Hmm... Maybe this might help

http://www.ramelectronics.net/html/usb_smartnet_cables.html