Does Windows 7 now access HFS+ ??

I have a 2TB MiniMax hard drive attached to my Airport Extreme Base Station.
This HDD is formatted in HFS+.

I was messing about with my wife's laptop (Windows 7) and mapped a drive to the MiniMax drive successfully. I was also able to create and delete a file on the drive as well?!

I thought the drive had to be FAT32, or exFAT, for Windows to work with it etc??

 

Your wife installed MacDrive behind your back. LOL


As far as I know, Windows 7 does not have native HFS+ support yet, and that can be a good thing. I sort of feel secure that my Windows installation does not have access to my Mac partition, unless I myself permit it (with MacDrive, say). Can you imagine the potential havoc on your Mac if a windows virus/malware could natively acess your Mac installation?

 

Nope - nothing installed on the laptop - I reinstalled it myself with Windows 7, Avast, and Office 2007 just last week.
You cant actually map to the drive without my password etc, but to be honest I was pleasantly surprised. I was considering reformatting the drive to FAT32 so that she could access the shared photos etc I store on the network drive, but now it seems I wont need to!!

All of my sensitive data is on other unshared disks.
Also, to access my network disc you need to first connect to my wireless, then know the name of the drive to map to, then have a password to connect to it. Most of the time I just connect everyone onto the Guest network, rather then my main wireless, so I still feel Im pretty secure

Still a bit puzzled how a fresh win7 install, with no further software, can access, and read/write, to my HFS+ shared drive!

 

easy, your AE, or TC unit shares the drives by SMB network shares. Windows LOVES network shares, which do not need native support for however the drive is formatted. I have HSF+, EXT3, EXT4, NTFS, ZFS on my home/business netowork and most OS's are happy to use them all.

now stick that drive on her USB port and its a different story as it becomes a local non network drive.

it also works in reverse, why can you download torrents and files from users on the internet that use NTFS? same principle the network normally makes shares a universal file format and acts as a translator.

 

Ah, that explains it!
So if I share a NTFS disk on the network in the same manner, my MBP should be able to read/write to it also?
Great explanation - the mystery solved!!

 

Yes. The format of the drive doesn't make any difference over the network unless there is some size limitation like FAT32.

 

This is all correct. There is a special protocol for sending information over a network, and that protocol is used to transfer files across the network. The filesystem on the disk doesn't matter.

If you are interested in a modern file system that will work on both machines locally without the need for extra software, try exFAT. exFAT is basically fat64, and it has had windows support since early 2009, and snow leopard support for about a month.

 

So am I still able to apply basic permissions on folders/files over a network share??

For example, on Windows I would apply share permissions, or NTFS File/Folder permissions, which would remain intact over the network. Can I do the same on my HDD connected to the AEBS, so both MAC and Windows users have some light restriction?