Working with Windows: Shared Drives

This updated guide examines Working with Windows: Shared Drives and organizes the essential facts, background, and practical takeaways in clear American English.

Network administration - There are three ways a Mac computer and a PC can use the same drive.

There are three interesting ways to share a hard drive between Mac and PC computers for general backup and storage: You can exchange USB drives between them; may use network storage devices (NAS) (such as Apple's Time Capsule); and can also use the file sharing feature to backup data on the system to an external drive attached to another system.

Exchange via USB

Mac and PC computers have USB ports from which you can connect to removable drives. However, only one problem is formatting.

If the external drive is formatted for Mac (using HFS Extended or another variant), Windows will not recognize it. However, we can fix this by installing MacDrive 8 $ 50 Mediafour software on Windows system; This software will allow Windows to use drives formatted by Mac.

If the hard drive is formatted in the NTSF format of Windows, and mount it on the desktop when you plug in the Mac, you still can't copy files from it. The reason is because OS X can read NTFS-formatted drives but it cannot write to them. We can fix this problem by installing Paragon Software's NTSF for Mac OS X $ 32 software. If you save money - and if you're a risk-saver - you can experiment with free programs: NTFS-3G for Mac OS X and MacFuse, which must be installed together.

There is a third format that both Mac OS X and Windows can read and write natively, which is FAT32. It is also the format that most USB drives use. However, FAT32 has some limitations: It cannot save files larger than 4GB, you can boot a Mac computer from it and be slow. If you want to use FAT32 on a shared USB, use Mac OS X's Disk Utility to erase and reformat the hard drive under what Disk Utility calls MS-DOS (FAT).

Connect with NAS

Mac and PC computers can use most attached storage devices over wired or wireless networks; A typical Apple Time Capsule is one of the best options for shared backups.

Macs and PCs can backup to the same Time Capsule drive

Time Capsule is formatted as FAT32, so both Mac and Windows computers can read and write on it. With file transfer, it supports the SMB protocol (used by Windows and Linux systems) as well as the Apple Filing Protocol (AFP).

The Time Capsule CD-ROM includes Windows versions of AirPort Utility and Bonjour Printer Wizard, so the PC can install and manage the Time Capsule and any printer attached to it.

Most non-Apple NAS devices are FAT32 formatted, but need to be checked before buying. You can reformat an NTFS NAS device later. Non-Apple NAS devices usually only support SMB file sharing. If you don't see such a device in the Finder, try typing its network address — smb: // ipaddress — into the Connect To Server dialog box.

Share external drive

The third way to share storage between Mac and PC is to plug a USB or a FireWire device into your Mac and then perform a PC backup to this device over the network using file sharing.

The only difference and the file sharing feature described above is that you must specify the external drive on the Mac when connecting the USB drive.

To do so, open the Sharing window in System Preferences . Select File Sharing in the left column. Click Options , make sure SMB is selected, then click Done . Back in the Sharing window, click the button with the ' + ' sign under the Shared Folders column. In the left window under Devices , select your Mac , then select the external USB drive. Click the plus sign. Now you can set the read / write privileges for the shared drive as you do with folders.