Sharing, Mac Tiger & Windows XP
My mission tonight was to get my Maxtor external hard drive partitioned, formatted and shared in such a way that it would be attached to my Mac with one Mac-dedicated share, but also have two shares readable and writable from Tim’s WinXP computer. Those of you non-geeks already know this post isn’t for you… but the elite few can read on.
As you read on, see how many of the trivia questions scattered throughout the post you could already answer. For me, it was none!
Partition Sizes and Formats
| Trivia Question #1: |
What partitions can be read by both Mac and Windows and what is the maximum size for one of those? |
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| Answer: |
FAT and FAT32 partitions. Max size for Win2000 compatibility is 32GB; max size for WinXP compatibility is 2000GB - essentially no limit - but it can’t format FAT32 partitions larger than 32GB. Ha! My Mac has no such restriction. |
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| Trivia Question #2: |
What kind of boot sector does a drive with both FAT32 and MacOS-Extended partitions need to have? |
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| Answer: |
Master Boot Record (MBR) - not the typical boot record type used by a Mac. |
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Lucky for me, the Disk Utility in MacOS Tiger was able to partition the external drive, give it a boot sector compatible with Windows, format the partitions as required (2 in “MS-DOS” (FAT32) and 1 in “Mac OS-Extended”), and create all the disk mount points with about three clicks of a button. I’ve read the previous versions of the MacOS were much less friendly when trying to accomplish this so I’m very happy it was this easy - took 2 minutes flat.
Sharing
| Trivia Question #3: |
Is the MacOS capable of sharing folders in a way that they can be recognized by Windows? If yes, how? |
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| Answer: |
Yes. New in MacOS Tiger (10.4.x) is a Samba server. In previous versions, there was a Samba client which allowed the Mac to view files on a Windows share. Now with Tiger, you can share files using Samba server in such a way that Windows users can use them. For those of you left wondering, what is Samba? It’s actually a Unix tool for sharing - but since Mac is Unix-based, tuh-duh! |
To enable Windows sharing, you need to go to Sharing in your System Preferences and check “Windows Sharing” in the list of services. Then you need to click the “Enable Users…” button and mark the users which are allowed to use shares via Samba (e.g. shares for Windows users) - if you forget to do these two things you won’t get very far. Now, moving on…
| Trivia Question #4: |
Is the MacOS capable of sharing external mounted partitions? |
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| Answer: |
No. As I understand it, you can only share things from the partition on which the OS is installed, via the Sharing folder in your home directory. |
Isn’t this fun? Upon reading the question to #4 I was feeling a bit disappointed in my Mac, until I learned about the donate-ware Sharepoints from Hornby. This life-saving program allows you to share any partition or folder available on your Mac. AND it supports the Mac’s Samba-sharing for Windows users. AND it runs natively on the Intel-based Mac. I donated money to them, needless to say!
So at the end of the day, here I am with my lovely Maxtor partitioned just the way I want it, formatted just the way I want it, with Tim able to access it just the way he needs to! Macs rock.
on September 22nd, 2006 at 22:19
I am married to a geek! ;-)
on September 26th, 2006 at 4:40
Huh, MBR isn’t the standard method for OSX? MBR is standard for most Linux distro’s, so I assumed it was the same for OSX…
FAT32 really speaks for itself, since it’s the only more or less universal partition type. Memory cards, digicams, mp3 players, etc. all use FAT16/32 as their standard partition type..
Samba is nice eh?