Drive sharing between MAC and WINDOWS

[ryteker]

Hi All,
This is my very first post, and hope it is appropriate for this part of the Forum.
I needed to upgrade from my old windows Desktop & Laptop Windows 10 PC's and decided to take the plunge and go for a top of the range MacBook Pro to hopefully replace both systems.
I'm relatively happy with how things are going with my limited knowledge of the MAC up to now, but would appreciate a little help with the following ....
I have some Windows 10 ‘legacy’ software that is required to run under Windows 10, so have install both VMWare Fusion and Windows 10, and am able to swap between Windows and Mac OS easily etc.
I have a 5 TB external HDD which I formatted under MAC for ExFat assuming it would be visible and accessible for both reading and writing in both systems, but although I can do this under the MAC, I am not able to ‘see’ the drive in the Windows installation.
Any suggestions/help would be appreciated. (Do I maybe need to use Far32 ?)
Thanks
Roy

 

[Audit13]

Does the drive appear in Windows' Disk Management console?

I format all of my drives using Windows the NTFS format and run NTFS for Mac from Paragon software on my Macs to read and write to these NTFS-formatted drives.

 

[jerryk]

Use FAT32. Supposedly it does not corrupt when you just pull the drive without unmounting.

 

[al404]

I personally would not go the NTFS road
I would try to format the drive under windows

 

[Audit13]

I find the fat32 limits for partition size (2TB) and file size (4 GB) too low for my needs.

If formatting the drive under windows, I always recommend NTFS.

 

[Significant1]

Check disk management in windows, it might not have a drive-letter assigned:
https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-change-a-drive-letter-2626069

 

[ryteker]

Hi all,
Thanks for your quick replies, it is appreciated.
I'll give the FAT32 a go, initially onto a pen drive and see if it does the job.
Fortunately, there are no files that are more than a few hundred meg in size, (no 'iso's, pictures, music etc.) so the FAT32 format should not be an issue (famous last words! ) ....
if that works, then I'll go with it.

Audit13, the drive does not show in Windows Disk Management console.
I had a quick look at Paragon, couple of questions, in case I look at it closer.
Are you using the Free version or the Paid for version ? ($20 ish) ... still cheap enough if it's a one off payment.
Does ALL transfers have to go through Paragon ?,
I.e. I will be using Office365 on both Mac and Windows, with files stored in OneDrive, which I am hoping should be 'common' in the cloud storage .... but !
I do use other programs in Windows (written in VB.NET) that generate 'data' that is required by Mac equivalents etc.
for further processing ... I'm fairly confident on the programs, it's just the data interchanging that is evading me at the moment.

It's going to be a bit of a learning curve to get to grips with the new Mac, but feel it will be better in the long term.
Regards
Roy

 

[Audit13]

I noticed that you reference a 5 TB external drive in your post. Using fat32 means having multiple partitions with a maximum size of 2 TB instead of a single 5 TB partiton. I prefer working with a single NTFS partition on an external drive rather than multiple partitions on a single drive.

I am using the paid version of NTFS for Mac v.14 on Sierra. Tuxera is another popular choice for NTFS functionality under macOS.

Copying to and reading from NTFS drives requires no special commands. The Paragon software allows me to perform these same copy, write, and delete functions on the NTFS drive as it were a Mac-formatted drive.

NTFS, FAT32, ExFAT are file system methods for storing data on physical media. Files stored on one drive should be accessible and editable as long as you have the necessary program, be it on windows, Mac, or Linux, etc. to edit and save the file.

 

[Toutou]

ExFAT should work just fine. Maybe try formatting it from the Windows machine, if the other way didn't work?

 

[Freyqq]

Exfat is fine, but make sure it is formatted as MBR (master boot record) so windows can see it. Or, format it in Windows which will do this automatically.

 

[Audit13]

Formatting a 5 TB drive with mbr results in a maximum disk size of 2 TB.

 

[ZapNZs]

Will the information on this drive be backed up on at least one (or two) other mediums?

ExFAT has some serious shortcomings compared to NTFS or HFS+ IMO.

 

[ryteker]

The data is likely to be stored in the cloud as well, on OneDrive.
In fact, I'm considering using the cloud as the interchange medium, and just using the 5TB hard drive as the backup storage medium.
I'm still a bit 'raw' with Mac's yet, so still getting used to it, and 'learning' as I go along.

 

[Phil A.]

Are you accessing windows 10 through Fusion when you can't see the disk? If you are then that's expected as you are virtualizing windows, not booting into it. To see the drive in Windows through Fusion you need to set it up through the fusion sharing options

 

[ryteker]

Thanks for the tip, yes, I am trying to see it through the Windows installation via Fusion, that could well be the issue.
Any advice on setting it up through the Fusion sharing options would be appreciated, but I'll have a 'Google' around to see what I can find as well ...

 

[al404]

if you go fusion settings ( from top windows bar ) you can find an oral icon USB and Bluetooth, clickinging there you can chose witch USB drive connect to VM, so selecting and selecting your USB storage is like connecting and disconnecting from windows

 

[HaddockW]

I ponied up for NTFS drivers to read and write. EXFAT just gave me too many corrupted and unuseable drives. Out of 30 drives, 10 would get corrupted. That is a high failure rate for me. 1-4TB drives of various makes using Thunderbolt/eSATA and USB 3. NTFS never gave me a problem. I use Paragon NTFS.

EXFAT is still useable for USB sticks under 256GB but when you get into the terabytes, I don't trust it. If a USB stick fails, I usually just reformat.

 

[BeefCake 15]

Will this issue change under the APFS system?

 

[ZapNZs]

Will this issue change under the APFS system?

Good God I hope so - either ReFS getting APFS/HFS+ read/write support, APFS getting NTFS/ReFS read/write support, or both.

Both Apple and Microsoft are well aware that ExFAT is less efficient, more CPU intensive, less reliable/secure, and more prone to data loss, making it a subpar choice at best for those wanting optimal integrity and Windows/Mac capability. The concept of a journaling filesystem isn't new, and the advantages are no secret - the desire for this is, to me, on a very basic level not unlike wanting one's smartphone to get reasonable cellular reception.

It's 2017, and it's time for either Microsoft or Apple to acknowledge that many of their customers use both of their products, and perhaps that releasing their strangleholds on licensing would, in the long run, actually improve their sales figures. Microsoft and Apple both love talking about the future...and yet they have made zero progress with this decade+ old problem. :end rant: