ASK & DISCUSS
INDEXWill all external hard drives store Mac-formatted footage? And will I be able to download it to a Windows PC?
10 years, 4 months ago - Paul Casson-Yardley
Someone is going to transfer 80GB of footage from cards and has asked me to supply an external hard drive, formatted for Mac. I only have a Windows PC so will I be able to open these files via the hard drive? Is it possible to request the raw footage instead, and might that be more useful as I don't know what the next stage is yet? Also, can anyone recommend a good external hard drive, pls?
Only members can post or respond to topics. LOGIN
Not a member of SP? JOIN or FIND OUT MORE
10 years, 4 months ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin
Oh blimey, this is a can of worms. The answer should be 'yes of course', but refusals from some (naming no fruity names) companies to freely license their perfectly decent but proprietary file storage system, you have the following silly situation...
If *each file* is under 4GB, you can format the drive as FAT32, both Macs and PC's can both read and write to it
If *any file* is over 4GB, you need to format as either NTFS or HFS+. Macs will read NTFS but won't write. PC's aren't allowed to read or write HFS+ (without paying for bodge layers).
STUPID SITUATION and purely point-scoring between two companies.
There is a free solution, which is irritating but gets you through - They format as HFS+, and on your PC you install HFS Explorer http://www.catacombae.org/hfsexplorer/ which will allow you to copy the files off (not write to) HFS+ formatted drive, so can copy to your computer, then reformat the drive to NTFS, and copy back...
It's a STUPID SITUATION in 2015.
Response from 10 years, 4 months ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin SHOW
10 years, 4 months ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin
Oh that's good news! Thanks
Response from 10 years, 4 months ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin SHOW
10 years, 4 months ago - Andrew Morgan
Correction - got my ext's muddled - the correct format is exFAT - fully compatible between Mac and PC.
Response from 10 years, 4 months ago - Andrew Morgan SHOW
10 years, 4 months ago - Philip Carr
How do you format as ext3.
Response from 10 years, 4 months ago - Philip Carr SHOW
10 years, 4 months ago - Paul Casson-Yardley
Thanks, Paddy. That's very helpful.
Response from 10 years, 4 months ago - Paul Casson-Yardley SHOW
10 years, 4 months ago - Andrew Morgan
Actually it's much simpler than that - format your external drive as ext3 and both Macs and PCs will read/write to them without any issues.
Response from 10 years, 4 months ago - Andrew Morgan SHOW
10 years, 4 months ago - Andrew Morgan
exFAT - should be listed as a format option (for external devices only) on any recent Mac or PC (Windows 7 and Snow Leopard upwards).
ext* is a Linux disk format and *isn't* compatible with Windows without some fannying about :)
Response from 10 years, 4 months ago - Andrew Morgan SHOW
10 years, 4 months ago - Alan Dunlop
Yup, exFAT does the cross-platform job very well. I use this all the time on a LaCie Rugged 2TB for backing up camera rushes. G-RAID aficionados feel free to flame - use these as well for any actual editing...;-)
Response from 10 years, 4 months ago - Alan Dunlop SHOW
10 years, 3 months ago - Joel S
I really recommend getting a program called macdrive. (http://www.mediafour.com/software/macdrive/) This has got me out of several near death experiences. You can install it on PC and MAC in order to read hard drives from each others systems. In addition, I keep a copy of the program on the cloud so i can install it if i happen to be working on a different machine than usual.
Response from 10 years, 3 months ago - Joel S SHOW