I’m going to be interested in hearing what others have to say about this. I’ve been using Macs for years, and one of the greatest things about them was the fact they could effortlessly read a PC file. (Well, as long as appropriate software was installed.) OS X has become quite picky, it seems. Depending on the responses you get, you might want to ask the Mac user what operating system he has installed. OS 9 is very cooperative; OS X … Well, let’s just say I’ve got some "issues" with it, and Win compatibility is one of them.
Bob,
Hmm… The only thing I can think of is to make sure that the CD-R’s format is "generic" (i.e.: ISO9660).
I don’t think that even the byte order in the TIFF is critical, especially in a greyscale image. Having used TIFFs from many sources, without problems, in PSE2, GraphicConverter and MacGPSPro.
Beth,
What kind of problems have you bumped into with Windows to OS X ?
HTH
Kyle
Oh so nice of you to ask Kyle! 🙂
I’d been in the habit of using zip disks for transfers of Word and Excel documents between my Macs and a couple of Windows machines. None of the files are big enough to justify wasting a CD burn, but they’re too big to email, too. When I put a PC formatted zip in under Jaguar all of the data is corrupted and the documents won’t open. The disks have to be Mac formatted in order to get a decent shift, which means I can’t use them in the Windows computers. Bah, humbug. I was feeling really stupid until I found several other people complaining about the same thing. Something similar happens with my external hard drive. I never formatted it when it was new, I just plugged it in and it worked under OS 9. I get the same kind of corruption of docs now when I make a transfer from it. So, if I need something from the external (well, until I can clear it off and reformat anyway), I have to move the stuff to OS 9 and then transfer to Jaguar from there. The same is true of anything I need to move over from the Windows machines; it all becomes a two-step process. OS X is extremely stable, but something like this drives me up a wall! One step forward and two steps back.
Hiya Beth!
Been there, done that. I’m a convert from IBM’s OS/2, and the headaches I used to have with zip disks, in general. The ticket for any removable media is to find a file system that both operating systems can use interchangably. It used to be that FAT-16, from the old MS-DOS days, was pretty safe because it had been around so long that virtually everybody understood it. But then media got too big for it (I think FAT-16 topped out at 512MB) and everybody, and his dog, cat, hamster and ferret, came up with their own system. So now there’s NTFS, VFAT, FAT-32 from Windows, HPFS from OS/2, HFS/HFS+ from Mac, UFS from UNIX, ext2/ext3 from Linux, and the list goes on.
I’m wondering if Windows will handle UFS? That could be the "common ground" between the two systems. If you’ve an empty zip disk around it may be worth a try. I’ll also keep my eyes peeled for any file system drivers that may be available for OS X, that may help.
G’luck!!
Kyle
Thank you Kyle! It’s not a huge problem in the big scheme of things, but it sure is annoying! I’ll check and see if UFS is a formatting option. Oh, and I forgot to tell you that OS X won’t format the disks! I have to use either the Iomega tools or OS 9 to do that. 🙁
I know; I’m a terrible Macophile. 95% of the time I wouldn’t want to use anything else, but that’s down from 100% in pre-OS X days!
Beth,
It’s starting to sound more like an Iomega problem than OS X. I’ve been poking around and "mount_ntfs" is available on Mac OS 10.3.2. Do you have to use Iomega drivers on OS X, or is it just a device hanging off a USB port?
Anyway, alternate plan "B":
CD-RW formatted ISO9660 an option? At least it would be re-usable.
Also, there is a NTFS driver for OS X, but it is read-only, you wouldn’t be able to write to it from the Mac. (NTFS_1.0d2 on VersionTracker)
Kyle
But the problem isn’t limited to the zips, Kyle. I have the same problem copying from my external drive, which would have had a Win format.
I don’t remember right now whether I installed Iomega drivers or not, but I think I did, because I’ve got the Tools.
I’ll play around with the suggestions and see what I can come up with. Thank you for doing that research! I appreciate it.
Hokay Beth!
In that case, maybe the Win format is FAT-32/VFAT (which comes from the Win-95/98 part of the family tree). That’s what gave Win95 long file names and stuff. NTFS may yet work.
Good Luck,
Don’t hesitate to hit me on e-mail, if you feel the need. My address is listed on my account here. (Click "Kyle White" up top)
TTFN
Kyle
Beth, you ought to invest in one of those nice little USB-port flash drives – about the size of a flattened finger. I have one that holds 256 MB and cost all of $50 US at Sam’s. Very handy for porting stuff back and forth between my desktop and my (now nearly deceased) laptop.
Chuck
Those have to be reformatted, too, Chuck! It was after reading a complaint from someone on the Reunion forum about corrupted files when they tried to move information between OS 9 and OS X using one of those flash drives that I started to feel less incompetent. I’d been thinking there was something wrong with my equipment. Well, actually I guess there is, but not in the way I thought. Very strange. I can’t believe Apple did this to us. 🙁
Oh…..hmmm……that sounds more like something Microsoft would do.
Beth,
Saw a hint titled: "Use a Linux file system for Mac/PC drive sharing" at <
http://www.macosxhints.com/>
May be overkill for your needs, but this appears to work.
Kyle
Hmmm. "Overkill" might be a good word, although that’s interesting.
I haven’t found a foolproof way to deal with this annoyance yet, but I’m narrowing down which file formats seem to be the most effected when moved on a PC formatted piece of temporary media. Image files move OK, even though I do pick up .dat files and resource fork folders. Word files will move, but they won’t open unless dragged onto the Word icon in the dock, and then I have to do a Save As and create a new copy and trash the one I moved. Excel files are still coming out corrupted, and so are the files for my genealogy program. See? I’m making progress!
I appreciate you thinking about me when you spotted this. Thanks!
wrote…
I haven’t found a foolproof way to deal with this annoyance yet, but I’m
narrowing down which file formats seem to be the most effected when moved on a PC formatted piece of temporary media. Image files move OK, even though I do pick up .dat files and resource fork folders. Word files will move, but they won’t open unless dragged onto the Word icon in the dock, and then I have to do a Save As and create a new copy and trash the one I moved. Excel files are still coming out corrupted, and so are the files for my genealogy program. See? I’m making progress!
If you have both systems on an internal network, try FTP.
On my PC I have "Cerberus FTP Server" which is free. It is not difficult to set up. Once this is done, double-click and FTP is up.
On the Mac I use a free version of Fetch with OS9. You would do better with something OSX savvy, I think.
I understand the other issues, but this is the best way to do things internally. When you need to communicate with the external world, I feel your pain. For that I have FTP space on the internet. Everything should be zipped or stuffed.
Ed
Thanks, Ed. Earlier today I’d been looking for compression utilities for a couple of different systems, thinking that might help with the Excel and Reunion files. We have a wireless network, but I haven’t made any effort to get the various computers sharing. OSs 9.1, 9.2, 10.2, Win 98, and XP make it too confusing for me to even spend time bothering. I’ll get there eventually; I’m just whining because one of my favorite features of the Mac has been compromised!
wrote:
Thanks, Ed. Earlier today I’d been looking for compression utilities for a couple of different systems, thinking that might help with the Excel and Reunion files. We have a wireless network, but I haven’t made any effort to get the various computers sharing. OSs 9.1, 9.2, 10.2, Win 98, and XP make it too confusing for me to even spend time bothering. I’ll get there eventually; I’m just whining because one of my favorite features of the Mac has been compromised!
Are they all on the network, web surfing and so on?
I know FTP sounds mysterious and difficult, but it isn’t.
Ed
No, they’re not. I haven’t bothered putting the old Win 98 machine online, and I’d rather not have to. So far I’ve found workarounds, but there’s some way to have this work in a more straightforward manner, and I’m going to keep looking for it! I do have an idea that I think will solve the problem, but I can’t try it until I clear off an external drive and reformat it. That won’t get done for a few days.
Kyle,
Sorry I didn’t get back sooner to say thanks for the heads up on ISO9660. I would never have known what to look for in Roxio and it was set incorrectly.
So much to learn; so little time.
Bob
