I'd use a compact external hard disk in the mail, but he uses PC, and so far as I know, my Mac can't read PC-formatted HDs, right?
Then there are CF cards. I can get two 32GB ones for about $150, and I could probably use them in a camera after. That would work.
Anybody has other ideas?
Update: Tim and Kronostar point out that Macs and PCs can indeed share a hard disk, I had no idea. I'll look into that then.
... I'll just have Amazon send him a compact USB2 disk for the purpose. (LaCie's "Little Disk" is no larger than a hand and 200 grams, even at 500GB, and bus-powered.)
... I'll just have Amazon send him a compact USB2 disk for the purpose. (LaCie's "Little Disk" is no larger than a hand and 200 grams, even at 500GB, and bus-powered.)
19 comments:
If he gets a new external HD it should by default be formatted as FAT 32 that can be read/written by PC and Mac. The only problem with FAT 32 is that no file can be larger than 4 Gigs.
There are now Flash drives capable of handling such volumes, but they are slow. Almost indestructible shockwise, though.
On the other hand, I am pretty sure that you can read Mac drives on a PC. Just last night, I mounted Linux drives on my Vista machine, for instance (for reading, dunno if I could write with this). Using Windows drives with 'nix is commonplace, and Macs are now built atop a flavor of unix, so I'm sure someone, somewhere, knows how to do this. For instance, these guys probably can help.
But perhaps best in the long run is to install Blu-Ray RW drives in both machines, 60GB would fit on three disks...
Snow Leopard can read/write ntfs, its just not enabled out of the box. Google snow leopard and ntfs, a site like macosxhints or one of those will show how to enable it.
Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6 can read external disks formatted as FAT32. Thus you can use this file system for your external hard drive. The only problem with FAT32 is mentioned by kronostar in the comment above
You may wish to be a little wary of external drives (though I can offer no reasonable alternative, I'm afraid).
I'm literally in the process of returning the SECOND such drive in 2 MONTHS. Both were / are 1TB USB drives from a major manufacturer, and both developed faults while holding 650 - 850GB of data. In this instance, I can still read and retrieve data OK, though cannot write to the drive ... previously I had to make an attempt at recovering 850GB of images, which took 10 days of 24/7 processing on a fast computer.
Success rate was high, in the order of 97%+ ... but even 3% of THAT many images is a hell of a lot, particularly when they are randomly mixed in with the good stuff, and can only be weeded out by manual inspection / intervention!
If you have a bit more money to spend and want to explore some newer tech then consider sending him one of the SSHD (solid state hard disks). Amazon has them too. Intel are reviewed as being best. These disks won't be at risk in the mail because they are solid-state and have a far higher tolerance for abuse. The better ones are much, much faster than regular hard disks and they use a lot less power. So after you get it back you can use it to replace one in your notebook (assuming you have one) and it will use less power, run longer, and be less abuse sensitive. They weight less too and so will cost less for shipping. Main downside is they cost quite a bit more than same capacity as hard disk. They would make an excellent portable drive device due to their ability to handle knocks and drops. The fastest ones are really, really costly but some of the lower cost ones are still much faster than normal hard disks. Anyway, just mentioning it as something to look at. Not the best choice if low cost is the priority but if you have a potential use for it after it may fit in.
Just install this free open source software, http://www.ntfs-3g.org/
Somebody needs to send me maybe 60GB of data. That's unwieldy over FTP.
I don't understand why it should be "unwieldy" - if there is a 3000-DSL connection, which is quite moderate nowadays, then it tooks about 6 min to transfer it, if you can get full speed (usually by usenet). And even if it is half speed (usually by ftp), then you need 12 min - that's unwieldy? I don't think so.
Correction! Don't use the free version of NTFS-3G on 10.6. It wont work.
Neeraj, are you sure you're not thinking in MegaBytes?
Ouch ... you are right, I was thinking in MegaBytes.
In that case I would also recommed to send a SSHD because of the risk of transportation.
It is an intriguing idea. But I think I'll use a regular one this time around. 1) There's still a huge price difference, but if it follows the normal prices of memory, they will fall drastically over the next couple years. 2) Hard disks are shipped all the time. When not running, the reading head is secured at the side, they are rarely damaged.
Yes, I think a "classic" HD would be also o.k. And you are right, I think also that the price for a SSHD will fall very soon.
Do you encrypt the data, in case it gets lost?
Mmmm, I don't think so.
I push files of this size over the internet every now and then. It takes an hour or three, but it still beats Fedex by a hefty margin.
Also, people download files of this size from P2P services all the time.
So, what's the big deal?
Sorry, too tired to read it all, so maybe what I write is redundant, or not technical enough, but according to my experience (I have PC and Mac):
- normal external hard disk, without extra fancy inner program (designed to make it easier to use, but actually making it more complicated,) when formatted with PC, can be read by Mac without problem. My Mac was bought in december 2008.
- external hard disk formatted by Mac, especially the beautiful Lacie (nice, black, 500 giga) cannot be read by PC. I have it, first hand knowledge. It has a kind of extra fancy program inside, you can make a Mac/PC partition, that sounds very stupid because my other HD can be read without any problem and without any partition by all my computers. Thought it is a special HD that was sold... as a HD especially and only for Mac! It is "WD". I think I formatted it on PC...
Use a homing pigeon, it's more efficient than the internet.
Really, it is.
A computer company in South Africa tried to send 4GB of data simultaneously through ADSL and in a memory key carried by a homing pigeon, to about 100 km away. The pigeon arrived and the memory stick was plugged and set after 2 hours. Meanwhile, the ADSL had only translitted 200MB.
Pigeons are hi-tech!!!
They're also used to send blood samples to labs in case of some emergencies.
Not bad for "winged rats", eh?
Put up a private bittorrent tracker and transfer files over it.
Addendum:
You may use Opera Unite (integrated within the new Opera version 10.10) in the future - that's a small webserver locally on your computer, so anybody can download files or pictures from there. See: http://unite.opera.com/support/
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