External Hard Drive Sharing - Mac format works - FAT32 doesn't?

[beausoleil85]

Hello,

I recently upgraded to Lion and since the upgrade the sharing of my FAT32 external hard drive no longer works when connecting from a windows machine. I used to use this external drive as a backup and now I cannot access it. I did attempt to reformat the drive as Mac Journaled and then the drive sharing worked fine but I need this drive to be portable and functional on all OS'.

Can someone please help?

Thanks,

Mathieu
Mac mini, OS X Lion

[regulus6633]

I have seen problems like this too. I just format these drives on the windows machine instead of on the Mac.

[anthlover]

For Starters you want to use EXFAT it allow for file sizes greater then 4GB. XP requires a minor MS patch. Vista/Win7 etc work out of the box.

Now as far as back up goes. You want dedicated drives generally, more then one in the native format of the system so you can make bootable clones. On the Mac Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Super. Off Site using something like Crashplan is also an additional great option. It Is also cross platform. Unlimited storage for one computer for about $50 a up to year and up to 10 computer for $119.

[beausoleil85]

regulus6633 -- I tried this now several times and it still doesn't work. I see the shared drive from the windows machine as well as all the other shared folders. I can open everything else -- just not the drive. I also just tried it with a friends drive and it didn't work either!

anthlover -- I tried the drive in FAT, exFAT and NTFS(I know its read only) -- nothing shares unless it's formatted as Mac Journaled!

[beausoleil85]

So it turns out its a Samba issue. I did more research and came up with a piece of software called SMBup! Try it -- it works!

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/41541/smbup

[anthlover]

Nice find. You still do not want to mac up your mac stuff to Windows partition generally.