Saturday, February 17, 2007
FAT Discovery
After purchasing music through iTunes I've been getting the message that asks if you want to back up your music. Been holding off on doing it but I finally decided to back everything up to my external hard drive (EHD). This is an EHD that I used to back up data when I had my PC. Anyways, I just discovered that my EHD is read-only from the Mac! After some reading it appears that Mac OS X can read and write to FAT32 but can only read NTFS which my EHD is formatted in. Great. So you think okay I guess I'll take that stupid step back and format the EHD with FAT32 just in case I need to read that HD with a PC. But now you find out that with FAT32, files cannot be larger than 2GB and there are naming limitations. And if you format your HD with HFS+, which Mac OS X can read natively, you won't be able to read or write with a PC unless you purchase some type of application like MacDrive. Argh! So what is the best way people go about storing and sharing files between platforms?
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2 comments:
For backing up your iTunes, you already got your big and black answer. Yep, if you sync your entire library with your iPod then you already have a backup on your iPod. Just need a tool like iPod Rip or senuti to copy back to your hard drive. Also heard Apple will allow a one time redownload of your purchased items.
I got 2 EHD, one in FAT and one in HFS+ just in case but never really did use them with another machine. Usually, a good sized USB flash drive does the trick.
If you're really, really geeky, look into MacFuse which does some magic with various filesystems. You can read and write to NTFS volumes with this.
Lastly, if your talking sharing files on a local network, don't forget that OS X can do Mac and Windows file sharing ala Samba. In the System Preferences, go to Sharing, then activate Personal File Sharing (for Macs) and/or Windows Sharing (for Windows). Can then share files between machines.
Okay, not lastly, if you're sharing iTunes or iPhoto stuff, then don't forget that local LAN computers can see shared items. Instead of copying the files, you can play the songs from another computer or see the pics on another computer.
And, I've never tried this yet, but Keith has. He's used Hamachi to establish a secure VPN from remote locations back to his home computers/LAN. With this you have all your home resources available to you at work. Files, music, pictures, whatever is now available at your work location. And you can even remote control a home computer essentially giving you access to Road Runner (or whatever ISP you have). So if work filters out web sites, startup a hamachi session, take control of your home computer, and freely surf the web via Road Runner. Confusing but ingenious!
Before I saw your comment I decided to just format it in HFS+. I'm not feeling "really, really geeky" at this point in time. Darn formatting took about 7 hours with the zero option!
Good to know about the sharing and VPN options though. Thanks! Probably won't be able to utilize Hamachi at T Land but maybe elsewhere.
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