Controlling my windows files when booted in mac

[aldog]

Is there a way that I can make it so I can control my windows files when I'm in mac? all I mean by that is I want to be able to drag files onto my windows partition drive and then when I boot into windows those files will be accessible.

I downloaded a good sized file and I realized that I need to do stuff to it in windows and I can see the drive but everything's locked so I can't just navigate to the windows desktop folder and drop it there.

 

[TychoBrahe]

From your post, it sounds like you're not using Fusion or Parallels.

When you were first creating the boot camp partition, did you choose to format the windows partition as Fat32 or NTFS ? If your windows partition is ( someone correct me if I'm wrong ) over 32 GB in size then it has to be using NTFS. From windows, you can right click the C: drive and choose 'properties' from the context sensitive menu to determine the File System type ( see General tab ).

If Fat32, then Mac OS X can write or read to the windows partition ( files up to 4GB in size). If NTFS, then Mac OS X can only read the windows partition. And as far as I know, from windows it cannot see the Mac partition at all, without special third party software, like MacDrive.

If NTFS, then maybe a USB drive is a solution for transferring files ? I haven't tried that yet, myself. Or if you don't have one of those, even an MP3 player might work.

 

[aldog]

I don't remember what I originally formatted it as with boot camp, but when installing windows I chose to format it it as NTFS before installing. So I'm guessing there's no way to do it directly with ntfs then?
I have an external hard drive that I can use whenever, but just trying to simplify things.

 

[TychoBrahe]

Oh yeah. I forgot that you had to choose the file system type once from Mac OS X when creating the boot camp partition then again when installing the windows OS. Sounds like you have NTFS for sure though. I can't vouch for this myself, but have you tried Macfuse ?

 

[aldog]

No I haven't but I'll give it a try.

 

[m1ss1ontomars]

MacFuse and NTFS-3g are way too slow for any serious copying to an NTFS drive. Get an external drive and use that to transfer things from Mac to Windows. Or buy Paragon NTFS; I've never used it before though.

 

[aldog]

Ya I couldn't figure out macfuse, i don't know why.
So i'm just using my external like you suggested, even partitioned it so i had a drive just for that to avoid confusion. thanks for your help guys

 

[judgechamber]

So, is there's no getting around the 4GB limit?

 

[m1ss1ontomars]

Of course there is. You could split the file manually, for example.

If you dno't want to modify the file at all, then no, there's no way. It's a fundamental flaw in the design of FAT32. Well not a flaw, more like a design decision from a time when having 4 GB of hard disk space was reasonable.