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Do you have an external Firewire HDD for backing up your Mac, but occasionally wish to use the HDD under Windows? What are you options if a simple backup is all you want (you don't mean to create a bootable drive or "clone" of your internal HDD)?

I recently bought a LaCie d2 tipple-interface external HDD for backup purposes (featuring Firewire 800 and 400, plus USB 2 ports). This posed three questions: a) How should I format it? b) Can I use my chosen format under Windows? c) How do I simplify the backup process?

What drive format?

In the drive's manual, LaCie advise:

• Use FAT 32 if you will be using your drive between both Windows and Mac OS 9.x or 10.x; or sharing the drive between Windows 98 SE, Me, 2000 or XP.
• Use NTFS if you will be using the drive only under Windows 2000 or Windows XP; performance will generally be greater when compared to FAT 32.
• Use HFS+ if you will be using the drive on Macs only; performance will generally be greater when compared to FAT 32.

So FAT32 would seem the most compatible. However, most of the time the drive will be used for backing up the Mac, so suffering the performance hit doesn't make sense. Furthermore, according to LaCie:

... when FAT 32 is used with Windows 2000 and XP, though, volume size is limited to 32GB (by the Windows partition utility, i.e. Disk Manager), and the individual file size is limited to 4GB.

I currently have a 60 GB User folder, containing a number of files larger than 4 GB.

As of Mac 10.3 (Panther), NTFS volumes can be read, but not written to. HFS+ it is then... but how do I read/write to this from Windows?

Using HFS+ volumes under Windows XP

If you plug your HFS+ format external Firewire hard disk drive (HDD) into a Windows XP box, that machine will recognize the presence of the drive: you still need to use "Safely Remove Hardware" to disconnect it. However, only your internal HDD will be visible in "My Computer" because the Windows XP doesn't recognize your external HDD as being formatted:

Likewise, if you plug in your Mac-formatted iPod Windows XP will think it is unformatted—although this time it will show up in "My Computer"—but as removable media (!):

How do we get around this?

Dual-format partitioned ext. HDD

Partition a drive into HFS+ and NTFS so you can use it with both Mac and Windows. Sounds simple, but in practice it is problematic. Even if you did manage to get it to work, this means having a duplicate set of files on each partition so they can be read/written to by each OS, and that's not so clever. How would you know which partition contained the most up-to-date version of a document? Or which computer (Mac or PC) to plug the drive into to find out?

Mount HFS+ ext. HDD as Samba (SMB) share

This would involve connecting the drive to the Mac, creating a Samba share, and then accessing the share via the LAN from Windows. Turning on Windows Sharing in OS X System Preferences > Sharing activates Mac OS X's built-in Samba server, allowing Windows users on the LAN to access shared folders. In Panther, only your Home folder is shared by default. SharePoints is a nifty utility that will help you configure the ext. HDD as a share (see also the article here). Once you've setup the share on the Mac, use the Tools menu available in Windows folders to open the Map Network Drive window. Enter the address to the shared folder e.g. \\192.168.1.100\LaCie ext HDD and start browsing or drag-and-drop files to/from the ext. HDD:

The problem, of course, is that this solution requires a Mac on the same LAN as the PC you want to access the ext. HDD from.

Install MacDrive and read/write HFS+

The LaCie drive shipped with a time-limited trial version of MacDrive (review here) and $US10 discount code. With MacDrive installed your HFS+ format external HDD will show up in "My Computer", with a red apple to demonstrate it's Mac heritage:

MacDrive has the additional benefit of allowing your Mac-formatted iPod to mount as an external Firewire HDD under Windows (an alternative would be MacOpener).

If you want to access the music on your iPod, by-the-way, use Tools > Folder Options > View to show hidden files and folders; copy the contents of the iPod_Control > Music folder to your PC—you don't need any other third-party utilities. To access this folder without any third-party utilities on a Mac, see here.

MacDrive is worth the money for
its simplicity and is my solution of choice.

How do I make the backup?

I was interested in no-cost software that would simplify a document backup every 28 days.

Apple Backup

Apple Backup (part of .Mac) creates a single file on the target disk (xxx.backup). If you double-click this it launches Backup and gives you the option to restore your file(s). However, if you right-click on the single file to "Show Package Contents", you can navigate through your files just like you can with any Finder window:

There is a small saving in space e.g. a folder that is 4.6 GB (as dragged from one disk to the other) becomes 4.48 GB in .backup format. Interestingly, when mounted under Windows using MacDrive, the single file created by Backup is mounted as the individual files and folders contained within. You can schedule backups no less frequently than weekly, but it terms of options that's about it. It's also very slow.

Carbon Copy Cloner

Carbon Copy Cloner is donation-ware, and is geared to backing up or "cloning" a bootable image of your HDD. Installing the "Psync" software in addition allows you to synchronize the source HDD to the target HDD; you can also set a backup schedule:

SilverKeeper

SilverKeeper from LaCie is a free backup utility with a simple interface and a number of useful features. Rather than backup your entire User folder (for example) each time, wouldn't it be nice if each subsequent backup copied across to the destination HDD only those files that have changed on the source HDD? SilverKeeper does exactly that:

SilverKeeper also allows you to keep several generations of backup (if you have the disk space on the target HDD). You can schedule backups (again, no less frequently than weekly), and use the "Exclusions" tab to select folders of files to ignore (e.g. ~Library/Caches/) . It does what I want. Furthermore:

SilverKeeper 1.1 adds the ability to make a bootable backup of your boot drive. SilverKeeper will permit you to make a copy of your boot drive to another internal or external hard drive. Advanced users may also use a disc image file to make a single boot image of their drive. You cannot make a bootable copy to a network volume or to a PC-formatted disk. The external drive must be formatted with a Macintosh Extended volume (HFS+).

For more information about making bootable backups, see this article.

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