Sharing an External Harddrive between two macs: Issues

Keggers Senior

Hey folks,

I recently bought a new external hard drive in order to transfer files, folders and programs between two macbooks I have at home.

However, while the hard drive appears to work on the macbook with version version 10.6 installed, permission on my own mac (version 10.4.11) is read only. I am unable to transfer files from my macbook to the hard drive.

I would attempt personal file sharing, but we do not have access to a network.

Can anyone be of assistance? Is there any way of changing file-sharing permission on the hard-drive?

Any advice would be appreciated!

hearny

What filesystem do you have on the hard drive (Applications -> Disk Utility) should tell you.

Have you tried formatting the drive on the older mac.

Obviously formatting will remove all data on the drive so if you have data on it make sure its backed up.

List the options that you get.

Keggers Senior

hearny wrote: »

What filesystem do you have on the hard drive (Applications -> Disk Utility) should tell you.

Have you tried formatting the drive on the older mac.

Obviously formatting will remove all data on the drive so if you have data on it make sure its backed up.

List the options that you get.

The filesystem in question is Windows NT Filesystem.

No I haven't tried formatting the hard drive yet, but I haven't ruled it out yet. I'm just curious as to whether it can be avoided.

Well . . . According to the info page, there are NO options available:

Writable: No
Owners Enabled: No
Can Turn Owners Off: No
Can Be Formatted: No
Bootable: No
Supports Journaling: No
Journaled: No
S.M.A.R.T. Status: Not Supported

5uspect

There is no point using an NTFS formatted drive with OS X.
Format the drive with the disk utility as Mac OS Extended.

You could also simply connect both Macs with a firewire cable or transfer files wirelessly.

hearny

Ok you have 3 Options here as the old mac has only read access to NTFS (Windows File System).

1) Install 3rd party software on the old mac to allow read / write access see info here http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/how-to-read-and-write-ntfs-windows-partition-on-mac-os-x.html

2) Partition the drive using the MS-DOS (FAT32) filesystem.

3) Partition the Drive using Mac OS Extended

Option 2 Will leave the drive available to any operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux) but has other limitations like a 4GB File limit

Option 3 I think is the best for you as its a more reliable filesystem than FAT32 and as the drives primary use is on the two macs it makes most sense. The drawback here is that the drive is not easily accessible on Windows devices. You will need to install 3rd party software on a windows machine to access it.

**Warning the instructions below will wipe the disk so you need to backup anything on it.**

If you want to partition the drive open Disk Utility, select the drive on the left hand side (make sure you select the drive not a partition). Click on Partion tab as shown in the screenshot. In the drop down menu under "Volume Scheme" (where it should say current) change it to 1 partition.
Select the Format to your chosen filesystem and click apply.

hearny

Forgot to mention partition the drive using the newer mac as the other one wont allow you if its read only.

Keggers Senior

Thanks for the feedback everyone! It is appreciated!

hearny wrote: »

Ok you have 3 Options here as the old mac has only read access to NTFS (Windows File System).

Option 3 I think is the best for you as its a more reliable filesystem than FAT32 and as the drives primary use is on the two macs it makes most sense. The drawback here is that the drive is not easily accessible on Windows devices. You will need to install 3rd party software on a windows machine to access it.

Can you recommend any software in particular? Alas, I WILL need to transfer files between both macs and several windows computers eventually and FAT 32 isn't doing the trick. :rolleyes:

5uspect

Without any network?

Keggers Senior

5uspect wrote: »

Without any network?

Yep, I'm afraid so.

5uspect

You're going to have to give us some more information.
Are the windows machines laptops? Why can't you just create a network?
Are they machines that you don't have easy/regular access to? Do users have them out on the road for example? How much data you typically want to share?

As above you can connect the Macs with firewire.
The Macs, and newer PCs can be connected directly with Ethernet, just create a temporary network between the machines (or just use wireless). Use file sharing or even FTP to transfer between the different filesystems.

Do these machines ever have an internet connection? Why not just upload your data to something like Dropbox and distribute it as required to your various machines?

Keggers Senior

5uspect wrote: »

You're going to have to give us some more information.
Are the windows machines laptops? Why can't you just create a network?
Are they machines that you don't have easy/regular access to? Do users have them out on the road for example? How much data you typically want to share?

No both windows computers are desktops, one with XP the other with Windows 7. Both macs tend to be out on the road a great deal of the time. Admittedly I've had little or no trouble setting up networks between macs and/or xp computers.

5uspect wrote: »

As above you can connect the Macs with firewire.
The Macs, and newer PCs can be connected directly with Ethernet, just create a temporary network between the machines (or just use wireless). Use file sharing or even FTP to transfer between the different filesystems.

However, both the macs and xp computer need to be formatted. Furthermore, I have an awful of stuff I want to transfer off these computers before doing so. That only leaves the win7 computer as a means of storing the information. But every time I attempt to set up a network between any of the the three computers and win7 it doesn't appear to work.

5uspect wrote: »

Do these machines ever have an internet connection? Why not just upload your data to something like Dropbox and distribute it as required to your various machines?

Neither of the windows computers have internet access, which rules out dropbox. On that topic, are there any limits to the volume of data one can upload to dropbox? The amount of data can vary anywhere between 200MB to 20GB.

Sorry for any misunderstandings or miscommunications. This is all relatively new to me.

5uspect

So maybe the best option is to figure out what's wrong with the Windows 7 network configuration and get all machines talking to each other. Could you set up a common share space on one of the desktops?

A cheap USB wifi dongle or PCI wireless card for the PCs would let you do it wirelessly. But this would be a bit slow for transferring 20GB, about an hour from experience.

You can use the external HDD as a time machine drive to help you rebuild the Macs easily.

Keggers Senior

5uspect wrote: »

So maybe the best option is to figure out what's wrong with the Windows 7 network configuration and get all machines talking to each other. Could you set up a common share space on one of the desktops?

Sounds like a plan, thanks. A friend also mentioned the dongle and I'll certainly give it a look into.

5uspect wrote: »

But this would be a bit slow for transferring 20GB, about an hour from experience.

I honestly don't mind, provided the any data transfers in the end it'll be grand.