Is it possible to share an external HD attached to a MAC with a PC?

Hey. Not sure if anyone here is familiar with MAC/PC networking.

I have my PC laptop (XP Home) networked via a router to my BF's MAC. He has an external HD attached to his comp via firewire. I can see his harddrive when I browse to his comp via the network, but I can't see the external HD.

I am going to be formatting my HD and want to store my pics, music, saved game files, and My Documents on his external HD. I can't attach it to my comp, as I don't have firewire.

DOn't know if anyone can help with this.

 

If you only want copy those files into the external HD,You can copy the files into Mac's HD first, then copy them from Mac's HD to external HD.

BTW, I just wonder if the external HD has been shared?

 

The external HD was shared, but it won't show up on my computer. Apparently it's a common problem. Some mac sites suggested downloading a program called sharepoint or something like that, but my BF doesn't trust non-mac software.

So...I'm just transfering the files over the network to his desktop and he is droping them in the external drive. It's taking forever though!!! (I have about 20GB of music and pics).

I really should get an external drive of my own, but don't see the point right now since I will be building a new computer for myself next year.

 

I believe for any share outside of the MAC user folder you need to manually edit SMB.Conf on the MAC to include the share information.

And it helps to use FAT32 as the filestore on the external drive.

 

Similar issue but a bit different

I am running a PC with WinXP Pro and accessing an external HD with a lot of music on it with a file system FAT 32, (no problem with the MP3 files). These play well with Windows Media Player. My wife has a Mac and we have a new external HD for her, configured in Mac HFS+. My PC reads this as RAW. When I try to format the new external drive (250 GB) following the disk management wizard in my XP machine I do not get the option of FAT32 format, only the NTFS option. I want to format the new drive in FAT 32 to read the MP3 files in iTunes on her machine. Is there a way to do this? If I format the new drive in NTFS and transfer the files to the new drive, do you think the Mac will be able to read them? The goal is to move the music (copy) to the new 250 GB drive so she can use the MP3 files on her Mac. I am assured by the Mac folks that FAT 32 will be read by the Mac program she will use. I appreciate any help with this and so will my music loving wife. Thanks.

 

This might help for formatting hd

http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/hard_drive_size_barriers.htm

 

Hello macinyart,

If you don't have access to a 9X system, download fdisk from here:

http://www.23cc.com/free-fdisk/

Regards - Charles