Using XP with my external HD

[AVR2]

I have a 200Gb external drive that I use for video capture and editing via Avid Xpress DV. I've just upgraded from a PB G4 to MBP and, since there's no universal binary version of XDV yet (and it doesn't work under Rosetta), I've just installed the Windows version of it onto my MBP, and so far it seems to work OK.

However, I haven't yet tried mounting my external HD while running Windows on the MBP. I'm pretty sure that XP won't be able to read it anyway, but I've been told that XP automatically writes a "signature" to any new HD it detects - could this screw up the drive for when I try and access it again under OS X?

And is there any way I could partition the drive so that I have one OS X partition (containing all the stuff that's already on there), and one NTFS partition for use exclusively under XP?

 

[PuNkErX]

I use an external 250 gig hard drive with my MBP. I have it formatted as FAT32 so that I can read / write to it from OS X and Windows.

It works perfectly that way, but IIRC FAT32 can't handle huge files like those you are probably going to deal with. You should be able to partition that external hard drive with NTFS and OS X Extended just fine though.

 

[balamw]

You could try the method in this link: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20060628150518481

Partition it under OS X and leave the other partition as FAT32, convert it to NTFS after the fact in XP.

I've moved a 300 GB FAT32 drive and a 160 GB NTFS drive between my Dell, iBook and iMac Core Duo without a hitch.

B

 

[Core Trio]

Is there any way to reformat an external drive so that it will work with XP and OS X and still retain all the data?

EDIT: also, if I had a MBP, would XP be able to recognize a FW800 connection (my HDD is FW 400/800/USB 2.0 but if I can avoid having to switch connections, once i get a MPB anyway, then i'd be happy)

 

[7on]

There's a product called MacDrive that'll let you read Mac disks under windows.

 

[apunkrockmonk]

There's a product called MacDrive that'll let you read Mac disks under windows.

Yes, MacDrive really is the way to go in this situation.

 

[SC68Cal]

I've used a FAT32 Hard Drive between macs and windows computers. You just see all the little finder and explorer doo-doo that each leaves behind.

You can partition the hard drive into an HFS+ and NTFS partition, but realize that nether OS can use the other. FAT32 is the only one that both can fully read/write to.

OSX can read NTFS but cannot write to, and Windows by itself cannot read or write at all HFS+

 

[balamw]

I've used a FAT32 Hard Drive between macs and windows computers. You just see all the little finder and explorer doo-doo that each leaves behind.

This is true, but since he is planning to do video work with the drive he may not want to live with FAT32's max file size limitation (4 GB).

B

 

[SC68Cal]

This is a possible solution:

3 Partitions

1 HFS+
1 FAT32
1 NTFS

Use the FAT32 to transfer between the two partitions. Mostly transfer from HFS to NTFS, since I believe there is no problem with copying a file from a NTFS to a HFS+ since OS X can read NTFS volumes