Can I use WD drive as a back up for Windows 7 and MAC OS at the same time?
(I’ we read that system back up is possible only for one system which is the drive formated for)
I have a new WD drive. There has meen made a back up from PC Windows 7 and transfered some other files.
When I connect drive to my MacBook, I can see the files there, I can copy them to my desktop but I cant modify or add files because it seems to be locked. When I use the unlock program from WD SmartWare cd it sais it is not locked.
Is there a way to use the drive (just adding and modifing files) for both Mac and Windows system without the lock??
Hi dude, your drive is NOT locked, when the drive is locked you won’t even be able to see it.
What happens here is that the drive is working on stock NTFS (Windows) file system, which can be read on your Mac (You can open then, copy them out, etc.) but you CAN’T write to it (Modify, add or delete) because NTFS is not a native format of Apple computers.
If you want it to work on both computers (read and write) you need to either:
1- Format the drive to FAT32 which works on the 2 computers but won’t take files larger than 4gb and won’t do system backups, but will be applied to the drive itself (So all computers can recognize the configuration) or;
2-Install NTFS-3G into your Mac from the Apple web site, it will allow your Mac to WRITE to NTFS from now on (So the drive remains NTFS and you can do system backups on Windows), but this configuration will only work on your Mac as it is done using software.
Hope it helps ^^
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Thanks for your help. It looks that it works…
Hey - so I’m beginning to realize that I’m incredilby computer illiterate despite what I might have previously thought. I have an OLD Mac (iBook G4) that runs OSX 10.4.11. I just bought the My Passport Essential because the people at the store said it would work with both Mac and a PC. I just plugged it in and I can’t figure out which option would be best for me. I guess i can manually copy over all of my files, but I was hoping to do a system backup and have the MAC automate the process for me. If I do the FAT32 option, I won’t be able to do this, right? If I do the NTFS-3G option I can only do it on PCs, right? Is there any way to have files accessible on both operating systems so that I can do an easy system backup of all of my files from the MAC and can still add and access files from a PC?
Sorry, I’m confused - as always.
Cheers!
