Slightly OT: Formatting on a Mac

[marino]

Ok, I'm not a real expert when it comes to computer stuff, especially Macs (I've been on a PC for a long time), so I think I need a bit of assistance from someone who's familiar with both platforms.

 

The story: I have a project which is almost completed, which has been recorded in a out-of-town studio with Logic (on a Mac, obviously). Now, for a bunch of reasons it's not practical anymore for me to keep recording (and later, mixing) there, so in the next few days I'm going there with a USB hard disk to retrieve the whole thing (an album worth of material) in the form of Logic songs.

 

My questions:

1) Presumably, I'll need to format the hard disk beforehand, in order to save time. Do I need to format it on a Mac? (I could do it at school) Any particular advice about formatting?

 

2) In case I'd want to extract a few tracks later, to work on them with Cubase on my PC, will my PC "see" the .wav files? Will my PC see that hard disk at all? Maybe is there some kind of formatting trick allowing this? I remember that for CD-Roms, there used to be a "hybrid" mode. Or am I just going to be safer with regular Mac formatting?

 

As you can see, my ideas are more than a little confused. Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks!

 

 

[marino]

I forgot to mention: I don't have to be in Logic to complete the recordings, because I already have rough mixes and stuff at home to do that. But as I mentioned, I could want to open a few of the tracks to do some pre-mixing work.

[Skinny]

You can download a program called Macdrive- makes Mac-formatted discs readable on a PC.

[Joe Muscara]

Macs will read PC format, and I believe you won't lose anything by saving the Logic files on a PC format drive. Then, you should be able to get the .wav files in Cubase later if you want.

 

I'm trying to figure out if I can double check the first point for you, but I'm not sure if I have a disk I can use. By the time I do it though, someone like kanker should have a definitive response.

[MoodyBluesKeys]

All of the later Macs should read and write ok to a hard drive formatted with FAT-32 (32G is the maximum partition size for that). Some Macs, but not all, can read and write to a hard drive formatted with NTFS. All of the later ones can read from NTFS, but some won't write to it.

 

I don't have a Mac, so don't have more detail. If your project files are smaller than 32G (which is very probable), formatting the drive with FAT32 should be readable on either platform.

 

[zephonic]

IME OSX reads and writes to FAT32 just fine, but not to NTFS, at least not without a 3rd-party app. If you format the disk under Windows using FAT32, you should be good.

 

Apple's own file system is called HFS, and I think there is an app for PC that can make that work.

 

I think Logic's default setting for audio files is not .wav unless the user changed it. You may wanna check that with the studio beforehand.

 

Rather than converting every single audio file to .wav it may be easier to export the entire project as an .omf, everything packed neatly into one file for cross-platform/application porting. But make sure your DAW can import them as well.

 

Good luck, Carlo.

 

[therealvicz]

Might be easier to use a couple of USB pen drives if the files would fit. Otherwise Mac can read and write FAT16 and FAT32 format drives and read NTFS format. Files will be subject to normal FAT size and naming restrictions. You can format (called 'erase' in mac language) a drive on mac in either FAT format or mac's own HFS+ format, using Disk Utility. Logic is happy with wav or AIFF files by default will create AIFF unless you tell it otherwise.

[marino]

Thanks a lot to everybody who responded!

I'm still a bit confused though, and I have to do it tomorrow...

 

So if I format the hd with FAT32 on my PC, the Mac should be able to write and read from it? Great news. I guess I'll have to test it by backing up just one song first, then trying to re-load it on their Mac.

Or do I have do format on a Mac anyway?

 

A new question now: Since the whole project occupies less than 30 gig total... will I be able to use the same hard disk, FAT32-formatted but with Mac/Logic data on it, to back up other data from my PC? On a different partition, presumably?

 

Also - pen drives. In case I go with one or two of them, do I need to format them? I never had to format a pen drive so far; I guess that's because they come PC-preformatted.

 

Again, try to forgive my ignorance! And thanks in advance.

 

 

 

 

[Joe Muscara]

You can use any FAT32 format. It doesn't have to be formatted on the Mac for the Mac to be able to read it (if it did, then it would be pretty useless that Macs could read the format).

 

You should be able to use that drive for just about anything, Mac or PC. Partitions should not be needed.

[marino]

Thanks Joe. All those questions came from my fear of doing something wrong, being so inexperienced about Macs.

 

By now, I got a 500 gig hd which is already FAT32 formatted; from what I'm told, I should be able to use the rest of its capacity to backup things from my PC. It costed me just slightly more than a 32 gig pen drive.

 

Speaking of which, my last high-capacity (8 gig) pen drive has lasted exactly one week before it started breaking every communication with the rest of the world...

 

 

 

 

[MoodyBluesKeys]

There should no problem, Marino. I run a computer business, I carry around a 400G HD with USB connections and power supply. I formatted 32G of the drive as FAT32, just in case I need to back up a client's files on an older machine (Win 95, etc), and formatted the rest of the drive as NTFS - I just plug in the drive, later operating systems pick up both logical drives, and I copy the data. Very early systems require loading a driver (I carry the mini-CD with the driver around also).

 

FAT32 is the same format, whether formatted by PC or Mac. It makes a very good exchange mechanism in cases where files are 32G or smaller.

 

Largest USB stick drive I have is 16G - it came FAT32 formatted already.

 

[Joe Muscara]

The only USB flash or pen drives I have came free from someplace. OTOH, I know guys that walk around with a bunch of them. I guess they're quite useful for some people.