Looking for an external network HD for both Mac and PC

[daffy_dowden]

Hi all,

I'm moving away from home for at least 3months at the end of next week and I want to take all my music and documents from my PC with me, to use on my Mac laptop, so I bought a portable hard drive last week. I knew that the file systems used by both computers were different, but I figured I could try and get NTFS support on my laptop, needless to say I have failed at doing so. It was much more of a farce than expected, and I can't be bothered to fix it right now (i'll wait for the next Mac OSX to add support)

So, my thinking now is that I should just buy a networked hard drive and then use ethernet to transfer all the files. I figure that if the drive has some kind of server capability then it will be OS independent, right?

I've been looking at two drives, the Freecom classic SL 160Gb but I have a few questions. From memory I think that Usb 2.0 is much faster than 100Base-TX ethernet, will I be able to use USB 2 instead of ethernet? If I want to plug the drive straight into the computer can i do this with a network cable or will I need a cross over cable?

and i've also been looking at the Freecom 29011 which is marketed as a NAS Server. This has no USB port but 1000 baseT ethernet; I think this is still slower than USB 2.0, correct? The one thing that is really confusing me is that it says it is only compatible with MS windows and doesn't mention Mac OSX. If it's a server surely it shouldn't be dependent on a single OS, is this just referring to any bundled software?

Does anyone have any advice they can give me on either of the drives and my assumptions I've made? Or can you recommend me any better alternatives that are under the £90 mark.

Many Thanks,
Daf

 

[donkey42]

as you want a multi OS external HDD, it will be easier to setup and use an Ethernet NAT (& you can also you the device with *nix or BSD)

i wouldn't think the Mac will read or use NTFS, FAT32 however, is supported on much more systems (although i'm not sure your Mac will use FAT32, but it probably will)

what about this it supports both USB2 & Ethernet

BTW: not sure the USB2 connection will work with your Mac :unsure:, as ive not used a Mac, & i'm on linux now

 

[daffy_dowden]

yeah that looks good, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to be in stock.

So, to make the device OS independent, does it pretty much has to have some kind of stripped down Linux with a samba share on it or something? And thats what makes it a fully functioning server?

I think formatting the drive in FAT32 might be the only answer, OSX can read/write it, but the 4gb file size might cause some issues, what with DVD images and the like.

I'm still intrigued as to whether that Freecom 29011 is a proper OS independent server.

thanks for the reply

 

[donkey42]

yeah that looks good, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to be in stock.

heres a few more here

So, to make the device OS independent, does it pretty much has to have some kind of stripped down Linux with a samba share on it or something?

well that would certainly do it, but, i'd better say i'm not sure (i don't want to say something that could be bullsh1t

And thats what makes it a fully functioning server?

dunno, i'm not that good (but hopefully i soon will be)

I think formatting the drive in FAT32 might be the only answer, OSX can read/write it, but the 4gb file size might cause some issues, what with DVD images and the like.

Mac OS X supports ext3 (just checked) & ext3 is not crippled by only supporting file sizes of under 4Gb

I'm still intrigued as to whether that Freecom 29011 is a proper OS independent

no idea, but it's questionable because it only supports Win

thanks for the reply

thanks, he thinks i helped him:doh: :doh: :doh: