Question about detecting a Mac-formatted RAID 5 drive on a Windows PC
 

Hey everyone,

I'm using a LaCie 4Big Quadra formatted on a Mac (RAID 5) and I was able to capture QuickTime movies onto it. The plan is to hook the drive up to some Windows PCs at our client's office, so they can look at the footage we're capturing (it's a media library).

I installed MacDrive on two Windows XP PCs and hooked up the 4Big Quadra to both via USB 2.0 then FireWire 400, but it wasn't detected. Can anyone help me out with this?

Thanks,

Heath

Did you try the Media Four's website about not seeing the drive on Windows?

Mediafour | Support

I started a support ticket, but I wanted to see if anyone had some thoughts, too. Once I get an answer to my follow-up question, I'll let everyone know what happened.

Thanks,

Heath

We're trying something different, going back to basics: format one drive as Mac (RAID 5) and format the second drive as FAT32 (RAID 5). I know we can do it on a Mac (FAT32/MS-DOS) but my boss is doing it on a Windows machine.

Any thoughts?

heath

Easiest solution if you continue to encounter errors is to attach one drive to a Mac (any mac), network mac to PC, attach whichever other PC formatted drive to PC, copy data across.

Fat32 is going to give you issues if you have files greater than 2GB on any particular drive, we stick with MacOS and NTFS on attached drives and shuttle them around using SMB on network protocols.

Not the quickest solution, but cheaper than a full blown SAN, easy to set up in almost any environment (just need a router, or worst case a cross over cable) and even if you need to leave it copying over night - you have your data on the correctly formatted drive.

This isn't the 'ideal' - but if you are hitting your head against a wall trying to use drive reading software with raids which might have some funky hardware settings etc, then it's probably the most reliable method then attaching them directly to the incompatible machine and looking for a software solution.

We may try that solution--we're only using 1TB hard drives now, to make it easier. Windows XP 32-bit doesn't detect drives larger than 2TB...

Thanks!

heath