western digital my book 750 gb

[vudupadrone01]

I just got the wd my book 750gb usb and started using it to back all the files on my new mac. Plugged it in and everything worked find. Then I plugged it into my desktop which is a windows xp-dell. The my book never showed up so i went to computer management to see why. It said everything was working fine but i noticed it didn't have a letter assigned to it. I tried to right click it and assign a letter but it said it was protected and would not let me change anything. Does anyone know why its doing this or how i can fix it? I need to back up a lot of pictures and documents on my desktop. Any help appreciated.

[buzd]

Well when you partion a drive in Boot Camp (Mac), you can read the Windows drive from Mac, but not write to it. When you boot to Windows, you can't see it at all.

That sounds similar. I don't think Windows can read the Mac filesystem (which is a Unix variant, but I forget the name). There may be a Windows program you can use to overcome that.

You may be able to partition the My Book and format the different partitions separately with the different operating systems.

[vudupadrone01]

Originally Posted by buzd

Well when you partion a drive in Boot Camp (Mac), you can read the Windows drive from Mac, but not write to it. When you boot to Windows, you can't see it at all.

That sounds similar. I don't think Windows can read the Mac filesystem (which is a Unix variant, but I forget the name). There may be a Windows program you can use to overcome that.

You may be able to partition the My Book and format the different partitions separately with the different operating systems.

thanks do you know any programs that would help overcome that? Im going to do a search to see if I can find any

[buzd]

Originally Posted by vudupadrone01

thanks do you know any programs that would help overcome that? Im going to do a search to see if I can find any

Try this:
http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/

I bet there are other solutions out there. What I couldn't remember last night was that it's the HFS file system (equivalent to NTFS in Windows). Google Windows Read HFS, and you will get a lot of info.

[vudupadrone01]

Originally Posted by buzd

Try this:
http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/

I bet there are other solutions out there. What I couldn't remember last night was that it's the HFS file system (equivalent to NTFS in Windows). Google Windows Read HFS, and you will get a lot of info.

Thanks for the help buzd. I ended up fixing the problem last night. I hate when people ask questions online and don't come back and write how they got it fixed because someone else might be having the same problem. So here is how I fixed it

Turns out the mac makes it really easy to set up/fix the external hardrive to work with both windows and mac.

1st open up applications folder > then utilities > then disk utility

2nd When you open disk utility you will see any hardives the computer has or is connected to. Click on the external hardrvie to highlight it

3rd Now that the external hardrive is highlighted look over to the right and click on partition.Under the menu volume scheme select two partitions. Now you see two empty white boxes below. Highlight one box and then give it a name and what type of format you want it in like windows(fat). When done you highlight the second box underneath the first one you just did and fill in the information. This time though make sure you do in the other format(if you did fat the first time pic a mac one this time)


ALT: STEP 3 you could probably do it with 1 partition under volume scheme and format it with ms-dos(fat) and it would be able to work on windows and mac without splitting up your hardrive into two partitions. but i didnt do it this way so i cant verify it.

4th click apply and your external device will be ready to go.

[Denzien]

I'm glad you figured out the solution.

I was going to suggest right clicking 'My Computer', selecting 'Manage' and going to the Disk Management leaf in the tree window to the left. Then, it might display the external drive, and right-clicking and poking around would reveal how to assign the drive a letter.


The Manage console is pretty cool for all kinds of other stuff, too. FYI.