Using Firelite 60GB portable drive with PC & Mac?

retrograde · March 3, 2003 5:44AM

Ok, I have just bought a wonderful little 60 gig drive from SmartDisk called the Firelite 60GB. Now, I also bought a firewire card for the PC I have to "interact" with at work.

So, do I have to reformat the drive in order for it to be used between both the PC and the Mac or will PCs now read HFS+? Probably not so what do I reformat it with/as? <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />

defiant · March 3, 2003 11:42AM

You have to reformat it in FAT32. Or you get yourself <a href="http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive"; target="_blank">Mac Drive 5</a> which makes your PC recognize HFS and HFS+. It's $49.95 though.

If you go the HFS+/MacDrive route, you can also install a separate 'repair' system for emergencies...

matsu · March 3, 2003 1:01PM

I have an extra 60GB drive here. I want to put it into a USB/firewire case and use it for extra storage for my PB (at home) and to share soem files with PC's at work/school. Is there any way to give it two partitions, one main one for the mac (about 50GB or so) and a little one just to swap PC stuff around, 5-10GB of FAT32, and have them both on the same drive, or is this not possible?

retrograde · March 3, 2003 1:28PM

[quote]Originally posted by Defiant:

You have to reformat it in FAT32. Or you get yourself <a href="http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive"; target="_blank">Mac Drive 5</a> which makes your PC recognize HFS and HFS+. It's $49.95 though.

If you go the HFS+/MacDrive route, you can also install a separate 'repair' system for emergencies...<hr></blockquote>

Thanks Defiant that is exactly the information I was looking for, and I had no idea that MacDrive 5 existed! So I may just go that route as it would be nice to use the Firelite as an emergency disk for the Powerbook I am soon to order

retrograde · March 3, 2003 1:30PM

[quote]Originally posted by Matsu:

I have an extra 60GB drive here. I want to put it into a USB/firewire case and use it for extra storage for my PB (at home) and to share soem files with PC's at work/school. Is there any way to give it two partitions, one main one for the mac (about 50GB or so) and a little one just to swap PC stuff around, 5-10GB of FAT32, and have them both on the same drive, or is this not possible?<hr></blockquote>

Matsu that's a great idea, I don't know if it works either but that would allow a pc native partition as well as a mac native one... although you may still need MacDrive 5 if you want to move data back and forth between the two partitions when working on the PC?

macfly · March 3, 2003 3:01PM

as i stated in another recent thread, there seems to be a problem with using these drives with both platforms. im using a owc firewire/usb case for an old 20gb drive. i formatted in fat32. osx sees and mounts it but when trying to copy files from x to the drive, i sometimes get error-50 . some files(usually ver small) seem to copy but others (i wanted to put my 12gb itunes folder on it) dont...no idea whats going wrong

retrograde · March 3, 2003 4:40PM

[quote]Originally posted by macfly:

as i stated in another recent thread, there seems to be a problem with using these drives with both platforms. im using a owc firewire/usb case for an old 20gb drive. i formatted in fat32. osx sees and mounts it but when trying to copy files from x to the drive, i sometimes get error-50 . some files(usually ver small) seem to copy but others (i wanted to put my 12gb itunes folder on it) dont...no idea whats going wrong<hr></blockquote>

Has anybody else had problems like these? Becuase if this is the case I think I will definitely opt for MacDrive 5!

Oh, and is there anyone out there using MacDrive 5 that can tell me if it works seamlessly or if there are problems/anomolies?

Thanks

drewprops · March 3, 2003 6:00PM

Hey, how fast is that little bugger?

I have an external FW drive that I bought about 15 months ago and I take it around with me, but it's so damned big and has to have its own power supply. The FireLite is a tempting little bit of kit!!

D

macfly · March 3, 2003 8:05PM

this thread has been up all day and there is nobody that can answer these questions? come on folks! dont people use thir drives with pc's too?

sun_r · March 4, 2003 2:00AM

Hi,

I have bought an external FireWire Case and a 120GB IDE hard disk. I created the Partitions on the PC, because OSX won't let me create FAT32 Partitions. I've done it in 4 primary Partitions á ~ 25GB because I've heard that there are several Problems with OSX and Partitions above 32GB.

So, i'm bound to say everything works absolutely fine for me, and the speed is great too.

--

sun_r

defiant · March 4, 2003 2:11AM

[quote]Originally posted by sun_r:

 I've done it in 4 primary Partitions á ~ 25GB because I've heard that there are several Problems with OSX and Partitions above 32GB.<hr></blockquote>

it doesn't have any problems with such partitions, AFAIK.

macfly · March 4, 2003 10:23AM

sun-r,

did u create boyh mac and fat32 partitions or just 4 fat32? do u get errors copying large file to it from osx? im working with a 20gb and cant get big files to copy completely onto it with just one fat32 formatted drive

kraig911 · March 4, 2003 11:43AM

is that firelite fast enough to capture digital video too?!! Because if so I need to get me one. What is the spindle speed 5400? what is the access time and how big is the buffer?

sun_r · March 4, 2003 1:16PM

@ macfly,

I've FAT32 partitions only, so i can handle them very easy from my pc (WinXP).

And, No, I've no problems handling large files, assuming that 800meg CD Images or 1.6gig Movies are large files

I updated my 667Mhz Ti PowerBook to 10.2.4 today and there are still no Probs.

--

sun_r

retrograde · March 4, 2003 2:55PM

[quote]Originally posted by kraig911:

is that firelite fast enough to capture digital video too?!! Because if so I need to get me one. What is the spindle speed 5400? what is the access time and how big is the buffer?<hr></blockquote>

I'm not sure how fast the drive is as I haven't done any serious testing of it.. and to be honest, I wouldn't know how!

But, with that said, here is what is officially listed on the box:

Performance

Rotational Speed: 4200 rpm (5400 would have been much nicer

)

Latency: 7.1ms (Avg)

Seek Time: 13ms

Data Transfer Rates

40MB/sec (Peak)

22MB/sec (Avg)

This drive has been bought primarily as a portable backup as well as an "I-gotta-drag-awhole-lotta-datacrap-backandforth-between-2PCs-andafuture-soontobebought -Powerbook-every-damn-day-I-go-toandfro-from-the-office"

So no planned direct to firewire drive video recording... yet

[ 03-04-2003: Message edited by: Retrograde ]

[ 03-04-2003: Message edited by: Retrograde ]

sorry abouyt all the edits: misstyping on important data and horrifically long sentence that needed breaking!

[ 03-04-2003: Message edited by: Retrograde ]

retrograde · March 4, 2003 3:02PM

Oh, and I have yet to hear from anyone who has used MacDrive 5? Anyone want to share their feelings?

Also, any alternatives to MacDrive 5?

Oh, and one more thing (just had to say it

), Can I get a consensus on what the best route to go is? Fat32 or MacDrive 5 and stick with HFS+?

macfly · March 5, 2003 1:00AM

wasnt getting too many responses in this thread so i called tech support at OWC. the guy there said that FAT32 has a lot of problems and that it is probably best to format it hfs+ and use macdrive. i ordered macdrive but still , i thought it should be possible to transfer files to a fat32 from osx. is there anyone out there who regularly uses a fat32 portable drive between their mac and pc? come on, there must be people out there who have to use both... nobody has trouble loading files onto these drives?

skirwan · March 5, 2003 9:51AM

A few notes:

It is theoretically possible to get HFS and FAT32 to coexist on the same drive, but it's the sort of thing that only just-barely-happens-to-work. I've done it by manually twiddling bits in the partition map; it could probably be done by playing with pdisk/fdisk/newfs_msdos, but I'm not sure how off the top of my head.

OS X has historically had some quirks with FAT filesystems - though they've improved with every release, there are still some issues. If you're having cross-platform problems, I'd recommend formatting on the PC rather than the Mac.

Those performance specs are actually for the 30GB FireLite. I don't have numbers for the 60GB off the top of my head, but it's actually a bit faster.

FireLite is plenty fast for DV capture. At the last MacWorld NY we actually had a camera set up to demo this. Then someone stole our tripod. Grr.

--

Sean Kerwin

Senior Developer, SmartDisk

murbot · March 5, 2003 10:02AM

I use MacDrive 5 for my 5GB FireFly drive, shuttling files between my PC at work and my Mac at home. It's a great little app.

defiant · March 5, 2003 10:37AM

Skirwan:

On a off-topic question, what happened to your <a href="http://www.smartdisk.com/Products/Storage Products/Hard Drives/VSTFHFWHDD.asp" target="_blank">VST FireWire Hard-drives</a>?

They're all out of stock, except the 40GB drives. Why ?

skirwan · March 5, 2003 11:54AM

[quote]On a off-topic question, what happened to your VST FireWire Hard-drives?<hr></blockquote>

The older VST models haven't been manufactured for quite some time now. Our current desktop drives are <a href="http://www.smartdisk.com/Products/Storage Products/Hard Drives/DesktopHardDrives.asp" target="_blank">here</a>.

--

Sean Kerwin

Senior Developer, SmartDisk

Using Firelite 60GB portable drive with PC & Mac?

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