external HDD

[kabwon]

hey,

i am trying to browse my external 120gig (ntfs) drive but whenever i connect it via USB it doesnt even detect the drive, and there is nothing wrong with the cable becuase it works with my camera and there is nothing wrong with the case becase ive used it on a ibook g4. so im not sure what the problem is but its rally annoying me seeing as all my info is on my 120gig.

please help
thanks

 

[Macman]

I dont think mac os x will read ntfs formatted drives. but try opening disk utility and see if the hd shows up.

 

[schweb]

Mac OS X can't read NTFS natively. There might be some third party utility that can do it, but I haven't looked.

Is it possible to reformat it to FAT? Then you could use it on both your Mac and Windows machines.

 

[kabwon]

apparantly it does read ntfs, just in read mode though.

can any1 confirm this?

i have now opened disk utility and it just seems to be "gathering disk information" the whole time?? why is this?? never actually shows the "information"

 

[kabwon]

Mac OS X can't read NTFS natively. There might be some third party utility that can do it, but I haven't looked.

Is it possible to reformat it to FAT? Then you could use it on both your Mac and Windows machines.

well have about 100gigs worth of stuff on there but i suppose i could copy it onto another drive temporarily... can one not convert it to fat, i know one can convert from fat --> ntfs... just dont know about the former.

thanks

 

[Cloudane]

It's been able to read NTFS since Panther, I believe. Pretty sure I tried it on my external HDD. Doesn't write, though.

 

[kabwon]

i have now tried 2 different hdd's and none of them work, the one had 4 partitions on and only 1 of them were ntfs, still no success tho, is it possible that because the hdd is set as master that it will not be picked up? i cant think that that could be the problem but i really need this info and cant seem to find a solution anywhere.

 

[James]

i have now tried 2 different hdd's and none of them work, the one had 4 partitions on and only 1 of them were ntfs, still no success tho, is it possible that because the hdd is set as master that it will not be picked up? i cant think that that could be the problem but i really need this info and cant seem to find a solution anywhere.

If you want to be able to both read and write to a pc hard drive by both a Mac and a Pc, it needs to be formatted in Fat 32 mode and be sure to give it a volume name or the mac will not read the drive. I haven't used it in quite a while, but if i remember right Partition Magic will let you change an ntfs drive to fat 32 without having to clear things out and reformat...

 

[muso]

You can only read NTFS volumes on mac, but the read support is quite good. You'd have to reformat to FAT32 if you want to be able to write with PCs and macs.

 

[ed724]

i have now tried 2 different hdd's and none of them work, the one had 4 partitions on and only 1 of them were ntfs, still no success tho, is it possible that because the hdd is set as master that it will not be picked up? i cant think that that could be the problem but i really need this info and cant seem to find a solution anywhere.

Copy the external drive to a pc drive. Then install Macdrive 6 on the wintel machine and reformat the external using OSX. Then copy all your stuff back to the external. MacDrive 6 will allow wintel boxes to read and write to Mac OS drives. Not sure why your mac can't see the NTFS partition though. I used an external firewire/USB for quite a while as an NTFS partition and I could read it with the G3ibook. I like using Macdrive 6 better though, I preferr to keep my portable drive MacOS native.

ed724