Computer Nerds Needed, PC to MAC problems...

[usregimechange]

My wife's external hardrive got messed up, we think when I unplugged it without ejecting it. :spank:

My wife reformatted her external hard drive (after saving all the files to our c drive) but when she did so, and moved the files back, they would only open on a pc. They were all read-only on her mac. A friend tells us we could "reformat the drive in FAT 32." What the heck is that? Are there any other options?

[Benfea]

1. FAT32 should allow both computers to see the drive.

"FAT32" is the file system used to organize bits on the HD and was introduced with Windows 95. Your Macintosh should be able to read FAT32 disks unless something is wrong with your configuration. MacOS has been able to read FAT32 disks for a couple versions now.

[Blue-Jay]

2. What's a "Mac"?

(I keed, I keed...)

[Deja Q]

3. These?

[begin_within]

4. She reformatted the drive using a Mac? Different file structure.

[usregimechange]

5. No, she reformatted using the pc.

Now, how do we reformatt so it works on both? :shrug:

[begin_within]

6. If the files appeared on her Mac, but they were read-only, it means that

the file permissions for that drive are not set correctly. What version of the Mac OS is running?

[usregimechange]

7. She isn't sure, it is at work... How does a person change the file?

permissions?

[Solon]

8. Forget all that right now...

What happened was that she reformatted the drive as NTFS, which is the file system for Windows XP and Windows NT versions of Windows. Fat32 was the standard filesystem for Windows 95, 98, and ME. OK, the reason the Mac cannot WRITE to the drive is because Microsoft does NOT release the specs to it, unlike Fat32, which all other Non-Microsoft systems can Read/Write to with little problem. Apple doesn't have full access to the specs, so they can't do much other than a hack that allows Read Only access. Technically you can force the Mac to write to the drive, but that may lead to file corruption. The best bet is to reformat it into a Fat32 filesystem.

[begin_within]

10. You probably only have to change it once, for the entire disk, and then

every file on the disk should also follow suit automatically. How to do it depends on which version of the Mac OS you are running. You can find out by going to the apple in the upper right corner, click on that, and select "About this Macintosh" or in OSX, "About this Mac." The resulting window will show you the version of the OS that you are running. There is one procedure if you are running OS7, OS8 or OS9, but a different procedure if you are running OS 10 and above.

It's been a couple of years since I have used OS 8 or 9 so I can't quite remember, but I think you would click once on the disk then either go to the File Menu and select "Sharing" or select "Get Info." One or the other of those should allow you to check and uncheck boxes which share the disk and its contents. I can't really remember the exact procedure in OS 7, 8 or 9, but the answer is probably somewhere in those dialog boxes.

If it's OSX that you are running, you would click once on the disk, then go to the File menu and select "Get Info," then you will see a window with several triangles on the left, which expand the window if you click on them. Click on the one that says, "Ownership and permissions" and it will expand the window, the first item in the list should be, "You can" followed by a pop-up menu that probably says, "Read Only." Click on that menu and change it to "Read and Write." That might be enough to solve the problem.

If this still doesn't help, try going to some of the many Mac help web sites, such as:

http://www.macfixit.com
http://www.macintouch.com
http://discussions.info.apple.com
http://www.maintoshos.com
http://www.macsonly.com

Hope this helps a little.

[usregimechange]

11. Thank you!

[nini]

9. if you used a windows machine to move/copy mac files you may have lost

...the resource forks in the mac files.

If that happens you're probably not going to be able to fix them without some major tools etc.. if at all.