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    Backup windows and mac to external HDD?

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by deathbyevilspoon, Nov 30, 2007.

  1. deathbyevilspoon

    deathbyevilspoon Notebook Enthusiast

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    Well, just got an external HDD to backup to....But I can only backup in one OS or the other it seems. I have important data in both windows and leopard through bootcamp. Right now the drive is formatted in NTFS and so I cannot do anything with it in Leopard.

    Anyone found a solution to this yet?
     
    deathbyevilspoon, Nov 30, 2007
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  2. count_schemula

    count_schemula Notebook Deity

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    Use disk utility on the mac to format the drive as FAT. (It is actually FAT32).

    Works fine, just can't save files over 4GB.
     
    count_schemula, Nov 30, 2007
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  3. Budding

    Budding Notebook Virtuoso

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    You mean backup as in backing up files in the OSes, or the entire OS as an image?
     
    Budding, Nov 30, 2007
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  4. ANTDOD

    ANTDOD Notebook Consultant

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    I have just created two partitions on my external 80GB HDD. I had one big for Time Machine but created another one, 10GB and formated it in FAT. This way I have a hybrid drive and I hope it will work.

    BTW I can't belive MacOS X Help is so useful. In Windows I couldn't find anything after pressing F1.
     
    ANTDOD, Nov 30, 2007
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  5. Sam

    Sam Notebook Virtuoso

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    I know, ANTDOD. The Mac Help Viewer is excellent.

    And deathbyevilspoon, that is because OS X cannot write to NTFS, it can only read. You can buy MacDrive for Windows, so Windows can read and write to Mac formatted (HFS+) drives, but its pretty expensive. For Mac, the free MacFUSE lets you write to NTFS, but it isn't that good from what I've heard.

    If you want to share files between both Windows and OS X without paying, format the drive to FAT32. Both Windows and OS X can read and write to that fine.
     
    Sam, Nov 30, 2007
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  6. deathbyevilspoon

    deathbyevilspoon Notebook Enthusiast

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    Thanks guys...actually forgot that I started this thread, I've been so busy with college and finals this next week. Hmm FAT32, but can't save files over 4 gbs....Thats a bummer, I have a few ISO's I'd like to save on it if I could. Hmm, Guess I'll have to just live without and burn those or something.

    Actually, I think I'll make a small partition on the drive for those large files, like 20 gbs or something since those real large files are in windows anyways. Can anyone tell me how I'd go about doing that? Would I have to use a program. I think one I've heard of before was partition magic or something.
     
    deathbyevilspoon, Dec 8, 2007
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