Can PC and MAC access same external harddrive?

Ella_Guru

Hello,

I will shortly be buying a macbook pro in addition to my current laptop.
I plan on getting this drive to go with it:
http://www.newertech.com/products/ministackv3.php

This will be connected to the MAC via Firewire 800.

Is there anyway my currnet PC can also access this harddrive at the same time? Or can only one computer access this at a time?

Also is there anyway to simultaneously use it as a hub for both PC and MAC? I'm looking to connect audio interfaces to both and would like to locate the hub at a distance to minimise clutter.

Thanks for any responses.

snappieT

At the same time, as in over the network, yes. It's called samba. In system preferences on the mac, go into sharing and select file sharing. Select the external drive and hit share.
On the other laptop, go into Start>Run, and type \\<IP>, where <IP> represents the IP address of the macbook on the network (you can also use the netbios name should you be inclined).

If you actually want to be able to plug the drive into the PC, then you have to deal with filesystems. Mac likes EXT3, where Windows likes NTFS. They can't really talk to each other (You can get NTFS drivers for Mac, but they're messy). If you format the drive as FAT32 however, they'll both be able to access it locally.

~snappieT

leeroybrown

snappieT wrote:

Mac likes EXT3

OS X uses HFS+ not ext3. The ext3 filesystem is a linux filesystem and offhand I think you need to mount it as ext2 (no journal) in OS X.

Ella_Guru

Thanks for that. Never really considered the network option.
Any idea what kind of transfer could be expected over the network? It is a 7200 rpm external harddrive.

Am I right in assuming that the PC could access the drive by a wireless card? Its currently connected to the internet via Wireless LAN card.

If it were to comminicate with the Mac via wireless, would that mean that the Mac couldn't access the internet via wireless?

I have a telecom eireann wireless broadband router at the moment can that be used at all?

Thanks for any help with this as I've never went near networks before.

ethernet

Ella_Guru wrote:

Thanks for that. Never really considered the network option.
Any idea what kind of transfer could be expected over the network? It is a 7200 rpm external harddrive.

Am I right in assuming that the PC could access the drive by a wireless card? Its currently connected to the internet via Wireless LAN card.

If it were to comminicate with the Mac via wireless, would that mean that the Mac couldn't access the internet via wireless?

I have a telecom eireann wireless broadband router at the moment can that be used at all?

Thanks for any help with this as I've never went near networks before.

I have such a setup. Having a hard drive on a network is called NAS [Network Attached Storage].

Instead of connecting the drive to a PC and leaving it on 24 hours a day, making it a file server, you could buy a NAS device instead. I use the Linksys NSLU2. You can attach one or two drives [even a flash drive] and access the data over the network or even anywhere in the world if you wanted. You can create shares for individual users and password-protect them. This device can be used in Windows, Mac OS or Linux and others as it uses Samba.

I've mapped my share as a network drive on Windows and also on Linux. It works perfectly. The latest, stable firmware won't make my hard drive spin down so I'm running an older version. It seems beta firmware fixes this but I'm not keen on running it.

Regarding speeds, not blistering fast by fine for my needs and for its price. I get at least 4 MB/s.

EDIT: just noticed your questions about wireless. That's no problem at all. The device would connected to the router and so would be accessible over your LAN, regardless of whether the client connected to your router are connected by cable or by wi-fi.

Ella_Guru

Hmm, interesting. I really want to go with the above drive since it works as a hub too. I would want to hook that up to the mac so it could take a firewire audio interface and a few usb dongles.

So I was thinking if I hooked this up to the mac via firewire 800, then set up file sharing between the mac and pc, that should do the trick. Am I correct?

What I'm stuck is how to integrate the whole wireless aspect. There is another iMac in the house (not mine) which I don't want on the network. This also accesses the internet via the wireless router.

So now my (next: ) question is how do I go about setting up internet access for all computers, can more than one network be set up with the same wireless router?

Sorry for all questions, just that I'm more used to dealing with Audio things. Really I just want to be able to share certain files between the computers (MP3s, Soundfonts etc.) and access the internet with both.

So yeah, submit any suggestions please.....thanks