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Possible to read a Windows hard drive on a Mac?

33K views 20 replies 6 participants last post by  Clockwork 
#1 ·
Hello everyone,

I own both a Mac and a PC, previously owning only a pc and recently making the Switch. Coincidence or not, my mb and cpu got fried on my pc recently.

I was wondering if I could attach my pc's old hard drive to my Mac and be able to access all the files on it? There's some stills that I'd like to incorporate into my current iMovie project which are on my pc's hard drive.

And I currently have a 1g DP Mac G4 running OS 10.1.5.

Thanks in advance!
 
#2 ·
Good question; part of me says yes and part of me says no. I've always reformatted to HFS/HFS+ (which erases or at least makes inacessible all the info).

One potential problem: is there more than one partition on the drive? OSX's partitoner will only format a complete volume (no partitions) so that may mean it can't read a partitioned disk. Then again, it may be able to, you might have to try and see.

It won't work if your drive is in FAT32 format (WinMe/ 2000/ XP). I would be more confident if it were in FAT16 (DOS/ Win95/Win98), as the Mac can read & format DOS drives but not the later FAT32 format. Floppies and most removeable drives are not FAT32 because the drive size limitation is rarely met, just as most removeable disks in MacOS are HFS rather than HFS+. FAT16 drives are limited to 4GB (Windows) or 2GB (DOS), if that helps you figure out what filesystem you have.

If it's possible, you will have your best chances when running OSX 10.2. You will not be able to read it in Classic or OS9x for sure, and earlier versions of OSX have some problems reading removeable DOS drives.
 
#3 ·
Are they networked? It takes some UNIXy voodoo, but you can mount a Windows share on a Mac running 10.1.x

As I recall (most of this has slipped out of mu mind after Jaguar made it so easy and I dont have to enter it on a daily basis any more), go into the connect to server dialogue box in the finder (Under the "Go" menu)

Type in "smb://servername/sharename/" (where server name is the name of the computer and sharename is the shared point on the computer) and then click connect. It may take a moment, but you should either be presented with an SMB login screen (assuming your shares are password protected) or the share should just mount like any other network disk.

This is probably the easiest way to get the files off the hard drive once you get past the getting-it-to-connect-correctly part.

I did a couple of searches in the KBase about what file systems OS X will recognise directly, but I came up with nada.

Maybe I will try it out at work today just for fun.

--PB
 
#4 ·
r2traps wrote:
"I was wondering if I could attach my pc's old hard drive to my Mac and be able to access all the files on it? There's some stills that I'd like to incorporate into my current iMovie project which are on my pc's hard drive."

According to this, X.1.x and X.2.x support FAT and FAT32 filesystems, so you might be able to plug it into your PowerMac and have it work. If it's NTFS, though, I think you're out of luck.

What OS were you running on your PC?
 
#5 ·
It's a little unclear regarding FAT32; but Apple does say you can't use a Windows iPod (it's a FAT32 filesystem) on a Mac without reformatting the drive. The big question is whether it's iTunes and the iPod or whether it won't mount at all.

If it will mount (and that may require a trip to the Disk Utility) you should be able to copy the files.

I say try it (a G4 tower is easy enough to put a drive into) and see what happens. We're all dying to find out. Be sure to take a trip to the drive manufacturer's website and get your jumpers correct on the HD (configure as slave).

Otherwise, you could pop it into another PC and read it via Ethernet, as posterboy suggested.
 
#6 ·
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by gordguide:
Apple does say you can't use a Windows iPod (it's a FAT32 filesystem) on a Mac without reformatting the drive. The big question is whether it's iTunes and the iPod or whether it won't mount at all.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

That is odd, because I plugged a Windows iPod into our DDR 2x1000 PowerMac here just the other day, and it worked just like a Mac iPod, but it had a generic disk icon on the desktop instead of the iPod icon. Autosyncing songs, storing files, and even using the iPod updater (which I did last) all worked as advertised.

So I don't know what Apple has been smoking...

--PB
 
#9 ·
Thanks for your input everyone. haven't had the chance to try it out yet, but to answer some questions:

No, the Mac and PC aren't networked. I was going to network them until the mb and cpu got fired on my pc. This is why I'd like to try and access the pc hard drive on my Mac, because I don't have another pc to try it out on.

I was running Windows 98 on the pc.
 
#10 ·
VPC would be able to see the drive, but you have to keep in mind that Connectix provides proprietary drivers which act to bridge the Mac's drives to the hardware emulator. So, the Mac itself has to be able to mount the drive.

I was reminded of this this summer, when I accidently formatted a CDRW as HFS. I checked it in VPC, but the Windows 2000 server we use to upload photos couldn't read it. I had to reformat it as ISO 9660.

I don't know why Apple's Knowledge Base articles say the things they do about the iPods, but it's about all I could find on FAT32. Since others have had some success mounting these drives, and Apple's docs are vague (nowhere could I find a statement that said either "yes, you can" or "no, you can't") I still think he should try it and let us know what happens.

Be sure the drive had no part in frying your PC mobo.

If you like, you could try putting the drive in an external enclosure (FW or USB) which would be just a bit much work than installing it into the Mac itself, and wouldn't cost a whole lot.
 
#11 ·
Do you have OS9. I dont recall it working in OSX. I remeber having to tranfer files to OS9 and then putting it in a file and tranfering it over to OSX. I think it just did not show up at all in OSX. If I was you I would buy an old firewire or USB case of ebay and hook it up and give it a try. Now it may work in 10.2 as I was using 10.1.5 at the time.
 
#12 ·
Finally got around to giving it a try and got the results clockwork explianed. I am running 10.1.5 and the drive didn't show up at all. I will be upgrading to 10.2 very soon, so maybe I will be able to see it then?

clockwork, could you explain how firewire/usb cases work as I have no clue. Thanks!
 
#13 ·
Thanks for the detailed explanation gorguide. So it's pretty much the same as installing it into my tower, except it's external. Not sure if that would help my chances at all. Oh and I did have the jumpers set correctly (as a slave). Crossing my fingers that Jag may help me out!
 
#14 ·
The external cases for IDE drives are pretty straightforward, and should come with instructions. It's not a whole lot different than installing it in your Mac.
Basically the steps are:
Check the HD manufacturer's website to get jumper settings;
Set the jumpers on the HD to Master;
Use the screws supplied to bolt the drive in the case;
Plug in the power connector;
Plug in the IDE connector;
Close 'er up and plug her in to your Mac with FW or USB cable.

They are commonly available for $US 100 so if you look around a bit you should be able to get it for about that or less.

I would try to see what happens with Jag before I went out and bought an external case. I'm assuming you have the drive's jumpers set correctly (as slave if hooking up in a G4 case with an existing Apple drive).
 
#15 ·
gordguide wrote:
"I would try to see what happens with Jag before I went out and bought an external case. I'm assuming you have the drive's jumpers set correctly (as slave if hooking up in a G4 case with an existing Apple drive)."

Dropping the drive in a FireWire case won't fix the fact that it's a FAT32 drive (if that is the problem, right)?
 
#20 ·
Well, I managed to connect the Windows hard drive to my g4 as a slave. When I power up the Mac the hard drive does power up, but it doesn't show on my desktop.
 
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