I am in the process of transferring data from a mac to a windows box. I've heard of many issues regarding corruptions and data renaming. Usually, when Windows receives the file, windows will reformat the files and corrupt them so the mac cannot view them anymore.
What is the best approach on doing this?
I have a mac here which is using retrospect to backup to tape. I would like to install the external tape drive on the windows box and transfer the data over with this method. Can veritas backup exec restore the data from the tape which retrospect backed up on or will retrospect for windows need to be purchased?
Will the above method work out?
What do you recommend so I can backup data to a windows box and restore it back to a mac w/o any corruption?
Corruption? thats not true. I transfer files from mac to pc and vice versa all the time and I haven't had any corrupt file (except when it was canceled halfway but that doesn't count).
Just share a folder then transfer it through the wire or wireless through a router or just connect an ethernet through the 2 computer.
Wouldn't that depend on the type of file you transfer?
What does Windows do with file formats it doesn't recognize?
File renaming is another problem that comes to mind. I even have that without transferring files to Windows. There are certain very common characters that are not allowed in a Windows file name, if you use those when naming a file on a Mac (it doesn't mind), the character gets either changed in Windows and you can still read the file or worse something happens and you can no longer read the file.
Happens to me occasionally when I load files up to a server and Windows people try to download them.
I vaguely remember the "/" being such a character.
There are experts here in this group who can address this much better than I, but it's not a 'non-issue'
Backup to tape with one program and restore to a different OS with a different backup program?
This will take some serious research, but my initial response is: Not a chance.
There is a faint possibility that if you use Retrospect Mac and Retrospect Windows, same version, that you will be able to read the archive.
Tape is the wrong medium for transfer here.
You can transfer via Ethernet network with file sharing, or push the files to a server that is accessible by both machines, or burn to CD/DVDs, or get a Firewire/USB external hard drive, format it FAT32, and use that to transfer.
There is a little utility called NameCleaner which with batch-clean Mac filenames and substitute legal characters for the DOS-illegal ones, plus append three character file extensions to files based on the File Type and Creator. The big issues are slashes and periods - if you have a file named "MyLetter2\10\2006" for example, the DOS based OS will interpret that as directory Myletter2 subdirectory 10 subdirectory 2006. The file *will* transfer, but it will become inaccessible -- ("corrupt" is an adequate synonym here). Misplaced periods in the name can confuse the OS into trying to open the document with the wrong application.
There is also an issue with the path and filename length. If the total path from c:\Username\My Documents\..\..My extra long Mac filename here.doc exceeds 255 characters, the documents will be inaccessible (they might fail to transfer in this case I can't remember)
And of course, you have to have appropriate programs on the Windows machine to open the Mac filetypes. A Pages file won't open in Word or anything else. Renaming an Appleworks WP document to .DOC will not make it Word compatible. Fonts are going to be different. You have to plan for these issues in advance, perhaps by saving documents as PDFs for reading.
"windows will reformat the files and corrupt them so the mac cannot view them anymore."
Yeah - and you said no problems moving files back and forth.
I certainly have problems doing that with some Mac files. Doesn't really matter what happens to them in Windows, reformat, file name changed, whatever...the point is that they become inaccessible to the Mac when you move them back.
Do you want to transfer data to a Windows machine (as it, then use it within windows) or are you intending to use a Windows machine purely as a backup device for Mac data? (in which case, I wouldn't use the word transfer)
On second (and third) reading, it seems as if what you really want to do is to change your tape backup 'server' machine from Mac to PC and continue backing up your Mac data over a network, is that correct?
I think you will have to buy Retrospect on Windows for that, unless your PC tape archiving program has a Mac client.
Yeah - and you said no problems moving files back and forth.
I certainly have problems doing that with some Mac files. Doesn't really matter what happens to them in Windows, reformat, file name changed, whatever...the point is that they become inaccessible to the Mac when you move them back.
So your saying that when you move a file from mac to windows the windows back to pc that same file will be corrupted? Or did you do something to the file after transferring or before moving it back?
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