I've got a Mac running OSX that I need get some files off of to burn to a DVD.

I've got a laptop running Vista that has the DVD burner.

The computers are not networked.

The files are located on the external drive connected to the mac.

Will the laptop be able to see the files on the external drive or should I use a thumbdrive and manually copy everything?

Is the thumbdrive easier?

Is it just a matter of copying the files and plugging the drive into the laptop?

1/25/2009 9:40:29 AM

no, unless the external drive has a FAT32 partition, which OS X won't do unless you explicitly tell it to. your external drive is most likely HFS.

two options:
1) install MacDrive on your laptop, plug hard drive into laptop, profit
2) copy to thumbdrive (thumbdrives usually come formatted as FAT32), plug into laptop, profit

#2 is much easier.

you'll know if your laptop won't be able to read from whatever partition you have the files on - when you plug in the drive and try to access it, windows will ask you to format it. don't do that.

1/25/2009 9:49:40 AM

why not just connect them by an ethernet cable and copy the files that way??

1/25/2009 10:25:40 AM

You could also turn on internet sharing over airport & windows file sharing on the mac and wireless transfer the files that way.

1/25/2009 10:54:38 AM

so many good suggestions!

thanks!!!

Quote :

"no, unless the external drive has a FAT32 partition, which OS X won't do unless you explicitly tell it to. your external drive is most likely HFS."

i didn't know that was an option. l like that idea.

Quote :

"why not just connect them by an ethernet cable and copy the files that way??"

i don't need a crossover cable? will the computer see each other and auto config? or will i have to tweak some settings?

Quote :

"You could also turn on internet sharing over airport & windows file sharing on the mac and wireless transfer the files that way."

interesting... looks pretty straight forward.

[Edited on January 25, 2009 at 12:19 PM. Reason : eh]

1/25/2009 12:11:25 PM

If the computers are less than 4-5 years old, the ethernet ports are probably auto-detecting and don't need a crossover.

1/25/2009 12:50:31 PM

What mac do you have that doesn't have a DVD burner?

1/25/2009 1:52:31 PM

it's not mine. it's a friend who has one of those OLD ass imacs. at least it isn't multi colored.

i didn't know people still used those.

they recently got a pc laptop and and never bothered to move the files over or in this case burn them to a dvd.

1/25/2009 2:25:43 PM

will macdrive work for what i want?

2/4/2009 4:58:27 PM

Macs can read NTFS, just not write to it.

I use Paragon NTFS for Mac and it works awesome.

2/5/2009 12:08:16 PM

^ MacFUSE has an NTSF driver (ntfs-3g) that works well for writing, and is free.

2/5/2009 12:52:51 PM

^i had that at first and it kept screwing up. I forgot how or why but something was pissing me off so i got rid of it and got paragon.

2/5/2009 1:05:10 PM

mounting NTFS rw on a non-windows system is still a bad bad idea

2/5/2009 1:11:28 PM

So I've got two macs connected via Ethernet to transfer about 18GB and it's moving about 70MB/min. Is this typical? I thought it would be faster

4/10/2009 7:22:35 PM

Without knowing anything at all about your network or how new the macs are, I'd still say that's pretty slow.

4/10/2009 7:32:57 PM

danny posted exactly what i needed.

4/11/2009 8:30:59 AM