Jump to content
13 posts in this topic

Recommended Posts

I have OSx86 and Windows XP installed on different drives. How can I write to the Windows drive from OSX? I can't change permissions on the windows dive to Read and Write. Do any of you guy know a way around this?

 

Thanks!

 

I don't think you can. It has to do with the NTFS file system restrictions from an HFS drive. At least that's what I was told a while back... I may be wrong. I mean I have an external formatted NTFS that I think I can write to if I plug it in USB wise...

its a no go for writing to ntfs filesystems from osx. the only way is to have your xp disk formatted as fat32 or just a nice partition so you can read/write from both xp or osx.

the only downside is the 1gig filesize limit on fat32, bad for people who use dvd disk images alot.

Just a small correction: "The maximum file size on a FAT32 formatted partition is 4 GB or 4,294,967,296 bytes minus 2 bytes ..."

 

Personally I have 3 partitions on the laptop. NTFS,FAT32,HFS+ or other way of putting it; windows,shared,os x.

 

Keep in mind if you are needing access to a file in windows that is stored in mac, you can always install MacDrive which will give you read/write to the OS X drive/partition as well.

alternatively you can use darwine and run a windows program (i.e. word).. that enables you to write to NTFS.

 

i wouldnt think that would work. OS X still dictates whether or not you can write to the drive while inside OS X. OS X doesn't know how to write to that drive it mounted.

 

Your statement seems illogical.

 

and if by some weird chance it did work.. i would never recommend it as it would most likely damage the filesystem.

i wouldnt think that would work. OS X still dictates whether or not you can write to the drive while inside OS X. OS X doesn't know how to write to that drive it mounted.

 

Your statement seems illogical.

 

and if by some weird chance it did work.. i would never recommend it as it would most likely damage the filesystem.

 

It's a risky thing to say the least, those allocation tables can be death if they are played with improperly!

I don't think you can. It has to do with the NTFS file system restrictions from an HFS drive. At least that's what I was told a while back... I may be wrong. I mean I have an external formatted NTFS that I think I can write to if I plug it in USB wise...

 

No, you can't. It doesn't matter if the drive is plugged in via USB, IDE, SATA, or whatever. By default Tiger will only read NTFS, not write.

 

 

Just a small correction: "The maximum file size on a FAT32 formatted partition is 4 GB or 4,294,967,296 bytes minus 2 bytes ..."

 

Personally I have 3 partitions on the laptop. NTFS,FAT32,HFS+ or other way of putting it; windows,shared,os x.

 

Keep in mind if you are needing access to a file in windows that is stored in mac, you can always install MacDrive which will give you read/write to the OS X drive/partition as well.

 

This is probably the easiest and most common solution.

 

I like MacDrive, but the only hitch is that it refuses to recognize my HFS-formatted USB drive (don't tell me to use FAT32, it's 80 Gb).

 

 

Use partition magic to convert your XP partition (NTFS) to FAT32.

 

OS X can read&write FAT32

 

Erm, we've had this discussion before. Yes, filesize limit for FAT32 is ~4 Gb, but the default partition size is 32 Gb. So if you wanted to split your Windows drive up into two or three seperate FAT32 partitions, which would be somewhat painful to deal with, this would work.

 

 

alternatively you can use darwine and run a windows program (i.e. word).. that enables you to write to NTFS.

 

Wouldn't work. Darwine only provides an API layer to allow rudimentary support for Windows programs, but only inside Tiger. Theoretically you could use it to load the ntfs.sys off of a Windows install to possibly allow write support to ntfs. Here is a working read/write module for linux that uses this same idea successfully, but I don't know how difficult it would be to port.

 

OSX can also write to a NTFS drive.

But only when it is on a network and has Sharing enabled folders in it....

 

Cheers..

 

Over a network, yes, this works with every other filesystem available, (ext3, ufs, xfs, etc.) since the filesystem processing is done by the remote operating system.

 

i wouldnt think that would work. OS X still dictates whether or not you can write to the drive while inside OS X. OS X doesn't know how to write to that drive it mounted.

 

Your statement seems illogical.

 

and if by some weird chance it did work.. i would never recommend it as it would most likely damage the filesystem.

 

Agreed.

 

My personal solution is to use a large scratch drive, but not using HFS+, NTFS, or FAT32. Rather, I'd use the Linux EXT2/EXT3 filesystem that has great read/write support on Windows. I think support for it in Tiger is good also, I've seen stuff floating around coder's websites that purport to allow write access to EXT2/3, but I haven't tried any of them yet (not brave enough for a real dual-boot solution).

 

Good luck

×
×
  • Create New...