• Portable USB drive. Which format?

    From Glo8al@glo8alNO@SPAM.hotmail.com to comp.sys.mac.system on Monday, July 07, 2003 18:08:09
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    I have a USB2 drive (made from an old 20Gb labtop drive and a USB2
    case) I would like to format this so I can see it on both Mac and PC.
    I thought this could be done, and Mac can see PC CDs, and floppies but
    I think that is because they are formatted as FAT16, but as the drive
    is 20Gb I can;t format it FAT16, and FAT32 doesn't seem to work for
    OS9 or OSX.
    Can I get it to work for both platforms without third party software?
    Thx
    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
  • From Glo8al@glo8alNO@SPAMhotmail.com to comp.sys.mac.system on Monday, July 07, 2003 21:58:43
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    On Mon, 07 Jul 2003 18:08:09 +1000, Glo8al wrote:

    I have a USB2 drive (made from an old 20Gb labtop drive and a USB2
    case) I would like to format this so I can see it on both Mac and PC.
    I thought this could be done, and Mac can see PC CDs, and floppies but
    I think that is because they are formatted as FAT16, but as the drive
    is 20Gb I can;t format it FAT16, and FAT32 doesn't seem to work for
    OS9 or OSX.
    Can I get it to work for both platforms without third party software?
    Thx


    Got it
    FYI, you can use FAT32 and it will be seen by both platforms, and in
    OSX10.3 it will have NTFS support.
    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
  • From Tom Stiller@tomstiller@comcast.net to comp.sys.mac.system on Tuesday, July 08, 2003 10:03:19
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    In article <beefj3110ik@enews2.newsguy.com>,
    Stephen M. Adams <adamst@direcway.com> wrote:

    "Glo8al" <glo8alNO@SPAMhotmail.com> writes:
    On Mon, 07 Jul 2003 18:08:09 +1000, Glo8al wrote:

    I have a USB2 drive (made from an old 20Gb labtop drive and a USB2
    case) I would like to format this so I can see it on both Mac and PC.
    I thought this could be done, and Mac can see PC CDs, and floppies but
    I think that is because they are formatted as FAT16, but as the drive
    is 20Gb I can;t format it FAT16, and FAT32 doesn't seem to work for
    OS9 or OSX.
    Can I get it to work for both platforms without third party software?
    Thx

    FYI, you can use FAT32 and it will be seen by both platforms, and in >OSX10.3 it will have NTFS support.

    Except that with Win2k, you have a 32Gb limit for FAT32....I've a friend
    who wants to configure a 120Gb WD drive to have a 32Gb FAT partition and
    a 78Gb OS X extended partition, but Win2k won't recognize it if you
    partition is on the Mac, and Win2k can't make Mac disks. :-(

    Any ideas? I searched WD's website, but it didn't say anything helpful.

    Can you partition it on the Win2k system and then change the type of the partition to be used on the Mac with pdisk?

    --
    Tom Stiller

    PGP fingerprint = 5108 DDB2 9761 EDE5 E7E3
    7BDA 71ED 6496 99C0 C7CF
    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
  • From Stephen M. Adams@adamst@direcway.com to comp.sys.mac.system on Tuesday, July 08, 2003 15:20:36
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    Tom Stiller <tomstiller@comcast.net> writes:

    In article <beefj3110ik@enews2.newsguy.com>,
    Stephen M. Adams <adamst@direcway.com> wrote:

    "Glo8al" <glo8alNO@SPAMhotmail.com> writes:
    On Mon, 07 Jul 2003 18:08:09 +1000, Glo8al wrote:

    I have a USB2 drive (made from an old 20Gb labtop drive and a USB2
    case) I would like to format this so I can see it on both Mac and PC.
    I thought this could be done, and Mac can see PC CDs, and floppies but
    I think that is because they are formatted as FAT16, but as the drive
    is 20Gb I can;t format it FAT16, and FAT32 doesn't seem to work for
    OS9 or OSX.
    Can I get it to work for both platforms without third party software?
    Thx

    FYI, you can use FAT32 and it will be seen by both platforms, and in
    OSX10.3 it will have NTFS support.

    Except that with Win2k, you have a 32Gb limit for FAT32....I've a friend
    who wants to configure a 120Gb WD drive to have a 32Gb FAT partition and
    a 78Gb OS X extended partition, but Win2k won't recognize it if you
    partition is on the Mac, and Win2k can't make Mac disks. :-(

    Any ideas? I searched WD's website, but it didn't say anything helpful.

    Can you partition it on the Win2k system and then change the type of the >partition to be used on the Mac with pdisk?

    Doing anything at all with the disk on the Mac trashes the Windows
    signature. :-(

    I'm thinking that it's time to invest in software to mount mac drives
    on the Win2k system. WD seems to think it's impossible any other way.
    And having tried just about everything, I can't find a solution other
    than software for the PC.

    -Stephen
    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113