Mac question - probably the first of many

[Hacker]

Question #1

I've been doing some reading regarding my upcoming iMac purchase and something I haven't been able to determine is what to do with my external drives which is where all of my images are. They are formatted in NTFS (whatever that is) and and I believe this allows me a "Read Only" access - does this mean I will be unable to edit or do anything else with my images? If so, how do I get round this problem?

 

[mmcp42]

dunno 'bout Mac but NTFS is just the newer version of FAT - allows for larger partitions
certainly not read-only (in mickey soft world)

 

[Hacker]

Thanks Mike, I've been doing a bit more reading and it looks like the easiest way will be to buy another external drive, format it correctly and copy all of my files over, unfortunately that is a huge amount of data (almost 1TB just for 2008, then I have previous years as well :shake.

 

[samcox89]

yes, you can only read only with that format, FAT32 you can read and write on both mac and pc but your limited with a 4gb or under transfer. Mac does have its own system thats like NTFS, but windows cant read it.

What you could do is to partition some of your hard drive to FAT32 so you can use it on windows, and format the rest to the mac.

 

[Hacker]

Thanks for taking the time to reply Sam but when I got to this bit....

What you could do is to partition some of your hard drive to FAT32 so you can use it on windows, and format the rest to the mac.

....I got the "thousand yard stare" as that might as well have been written in Greek! I have huge amounts of data so I am not sure how your suggestion would work (probably because I don't understand enough of it).

 

[andrewc]

There is a plug in to allow Macs to read/write NTFS - but its 3rd party and may be unreliable. If you got a 2nd ext hd, format FAT32, then you could transfer things over, then wipe the original and reformat fat32

 

[Chappers]

Macs can only read NTFS formatted disks as standard. They can't write to them..However if you get a copy of Paragon NTFS for Mac OSX you can happily read and write to NTFS disks from your Mac.

You can get Paragon NTFS from most Mac shops or direct from the online shop. It's about £25 incl P&P. Also you can get a 10 day trial period version direct from Paragon

http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/

You can update the trial version with the full version serial no if you go that route.

I've got a Mac Book Pro running 4 NTFS disks with no problem at all.

 

[theMusicMan]

Hi Hacker

Just a FYI - I have seen several 1TB HDD's around stores and on the net for ridiculously low prices recently; as little as £70 which is a bargain for 1TB. I think I even spotted a Western Digital unit for a little more, around the £80 mark. WD's as you may know, are good quality units. I am going to be grabbing a 1TB unit sometime soon and moving all my stuff onto this.

 

[erding]

Mac does have its own system thats like NTFS, but windows cant read it.

You can install MacDrive - or similar - onto the pc and that will overcome the Windows issue.

 

[Grendel]

As your going to be using a Mac as your main computer you really want all these images on a drive that you can read and write to. Imo the simple answer is that you need to buy a drive and format it to Mac OS, (or buy a WD MacBook drive that will already be mac formatted ). Copy all your images from the NTFS formatted drive onto it, then format that NTFS drive to Mac OS and use it for future storage.

HTH

 

[Jaco]

Or you could stick parallels on it run windows its about £50 to buy.

 

[Shutterman]

I think the best thing to do Hacker would be buy an external drive and transfer the data, That way you will not have to worry about parallels or any other software.

I had to to that when I switched over, its a pain but worth it. Plus once you have transferred all the data you will be able to reformat the old drive to a Journalled OSX drive and start to use it again.

Nigel

 

[RobertP]

Don't know anything about mac but having been through a few disk failures recently - if you have a 1Tb external drive full of pictures you need another one the same for backup!

 

[theMusicMan]

Don't know anything about mac but having been through a few disk failures recently - if you have a 1Tb external drive full of pictures you need another one the same for backup!

Always best Robert to have a back up strategy and policy - if only for ones select images. Drive failures are not necessarily linked to the OS/Platformthey are connected to and can fail on both Mac's and PC's, so if you have files that you would not want to lose.... don't wait around thinking it won't happen to me, be sure to set up a resilient back up process to protect yoru work. It could be too late if you don't!!!

 

[Hacker]

Macs can only read NTFS formatted disks as standard. They can't write to them..However if you get a copy of Paragon NTFS for Mac OSX you can happily read and write to NTFS disks from your Mac.

You can get Paragon NTFS from most Mac shops or direct from the online shop. It's about £25 incl P&P. Also you can get a 10 day trial period version direct from Paragon

http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/

You can update the trial version with the full version serial no if you go that route.

I've got a Mac Book Pro running 4 NTFS disks with no problem at all.

That sounds ideal, thanks Chappers!

Hi Hacker

Just a FYI - I have seen several 1TB HDD's around stores and on the net for ridiculously low prices recently; as little as £70 which is a bargain for 1TB. I think I even spotted a Western Digital unit for a little more, around the £80 mark. WD's as you may know, are good quality units. I am going to be grabbing a 1TB unit sometime soon and moving all my stuff onto this.

there are some great deals around at the moment, I picked a 1TB Lacie external drive a few weeks ago for under a £100 and the build quality is excellent, much better than the multiple WD drives I have.

As your going to be using a Mac as your main computer you really want all these images on a drive that you can read and write to. Imo the simple answer is that you need to buy a drive and format it to Mac OS, (or buy a WD MacBook drive that will already be mac formatted ). Copy all your images from the NTFS formatted drive onto it, then format that NTFS drive to Mac OS and use it for future storage.

HTH

Any future drives will be formatted correctly for use with the iMac. Thanks Paul.

Or you could stick parallels on it run windows its about £50 to buy.

:nono: I've had enough of Windows but thanks anyway!

 

[Grendel]

Slightly OT but bear in mind that you'll need a drive specifically to run Time Machine on too.

Now that's a utility that makes a Mac worth the purchase alone It's saved my life a couple of times!

 

[Shutterman]

Time machine is good, just make sure you exclude your image drives as I am sure you will be backing them up separately, I just use time machine for the main drive, I use aperture software, so I have an aperture vault set up for the back up of my raw files and processed images.

Nigel

 

[cowasaki]

Hacker,

Aria technology at Manchester have Samsung F1 1Tb drives for £49.95+vat or did have last week..

There are several ways to sort it out.

Network the iMac and PC together then the iMac can read and write to the hard drive via the PC's OS or copy the contents of the drive to a new drive on the iMac as the iMac will read the NTFS drive (this is the best option).

I wouldn't bother with software to allow you to write to a foreign format unless you plan on moving the data backwards and forwards between the two computers.

If you haven't got two drives then where is your backup? If you do have two drives then you are sorted for the above conversion!

 

[jgs001]

I recently did that Hacker. I copied all the data from the external drive onto the internal Mac drive, formatted the external to HFS (Mac file system) and moved all the data back again. (I'm working on the second external drive for the full belt and braces).

 

[Marcel]

What I did was copy all my data off, reformat the drives as MacOS(Journaled), and then copied the files back.

Before I did though, I used the software as a temporary solution. I wouldn't suggest using it long term for your main machine, just to save copying, as you only need to copy it off / reformat / copy it back once, and performance should be much better than running software to convert on the fly.

 

[cowasaki]

What I did was copy all my data off, reformat the drives as MacOS(Journaled), and then copied the files back.

Before I did though, I used the software as a temporary solution. I wouldn't suggest using it long term for your main machine, just to save copying, as you only need to copy it off / reformat / copy it back once, and performance should be much better than running software to convert on the fly.

I appreciate what you are saying BUT as you are only copying the data off the drive you don't actually need any software as MacOS reads NTFS partitions anyway

 

[Jim.R]

Hacker,
Network the iMac and PC together then the iMac can read and write to the hard drive via the PC's OS

From the sounds of it, the OP has got 1Tb+ of data to copy accross. Doing that via a network probably isn't the speediest of options.

 

[shiato storm]

i was in the same situation not that long ago, I picked up a couple of extra drives and formatted them to mac file system, then transfered all my images from PC to the mac drives, once I confirmed all was good I formatted the old pc drives to mac and backed up everything thus covering everything in one clean sweep - files transfered and everything backed up
I've been steadily figuring out things on my mac too (been a couple of months), keep coming across new stuff all the time but unlike a pc its dead easy to just DO stuff.

 

[Marcel]

I appreciate what you are saying BUT as you are only copying the data off the drive you don't actually need any software as MacOS reads NTFS partitions anyway

Well I copied it off so I could reformat and copy back on..That's what I was suggesting the OP do.
As opposed to using the software permanently so he can actually use the drive (reading *and* writing) day to day use...iyswim

 

[cowasaki]

From the sounds of it, the OP has got 1Tb+ of data to copy accross. Doing that via a network probably isn't the speediest of options.

I know, hence my suggestion of just plugging the drive into the mac and doing it that way. It's just one of those things, there are lots of ways of doing it. If you are transferring small amounts from the mac to the PC then the network option is fine. From the PC to the Mac is easiest using a direct connection.

BOTH computers will read FAT32 partitions so if you format a drive using FAT32 then either machine can read and write it fine but you will need to format it other than using Windows because Microsoft set an artificial limit of (if I remember rightly) 128Gb. This is artificial and windows WILL read and write to a larger FAT32 partition it just refuses to format it. I use partition magic or format it using a mac. You can then just swap the drive between the machines without a problem.

OH and don't forget to have a read through my "TIP A DAY FOR THE MAC" thread. http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=1133124#post1133124