Saving mac files on NTSF hard drive... it is okay?

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ThumperStrauss@hotmail.com - 10 Mar 2005 14:38 GMT

We have a Western Digital 160GB external USB-2 hard drive. It was
formatted NTSF on an XP machine. But now we want to use it to backup
files saved on a Mac G3 OS 9x.

We started the transfer, and the files appear to be copying. But will
the NTSF formatted mess up the Mac files? Do we absolutely need to
format the drive in the Mac format?

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B Collins - 11 Mar 2005 03:17 GMT

> We have a Western Digital 160GB external USB-2 hard drive. It was
> formatted NTSF on an XP machine. But now we want to use it to backup
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> the NTSF formatted mess up the Mac files? Do we absolutely need to
> format the drive in the Mac format?

Should be OK for most data files, such as image files, word processing
docs, etc.

Definitely NOT OK for mac application programs.

reason:

Mac files have a data fork and a resource fork. The Mac disk filing
system keeps them together. Other file systems do not. So if the
resource fork contains essential info, as it does in an application
program, putting it on another filing system will break the file beyond
repair.

Bill

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@ m a c u s e r . n l - 12 Mar 2005 22:45 GMT

>>We have a Western Digital 160GB external USB-2 hard drive. It was
>>formatted NTSF on an XP machine. But now we want to use it to backup
[quoted text clipped - 16 lines]
> program, putting it on another filing system will break the file beyond
> repair.

It depends. Most stuff (including applications) on OSX don't use
resource forks anymore. For example on my main drive there are 336746
files of which only 7841 have a resource fork. Only 6102 files have both
a data and a resource fork.

If you would like to find out for yourself: These numbers come from the
output of hfsdebug (http://www.kernelthread.com/software/hfsdebug/)

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Mac Forum / General / Hardware / March 2005

Saving mac files on NTSF hard drive... it is okay?