How can I create a central storage location for my Mac and Windows machines to share?

Question

A few years ago I switch from PC to Mac. I didn't do this because I preferred to use a Mac, but because I desired experience working with both systems. Now, I see the pros and cons of both sides, and I use them both regularly. In fact, my job requires it.

Now though, I would like to create a central repository of all my PC / Mac data. Unfortunately there is a language barrier between NTFS and HFS+.

Is there any way I can create an efficient and reliable central repository for all my data? I prefer not to use 3rd party drivers as I've found them to be complex and often unreliable.

Answer 1

I think you may be confusing physical, on-disk filesystems with network filesystems.

1. HFS+ and NTFS are physical, on-disk layouts.
2. Samba/NFS (Network File System)/AFP (Apple Filing Protocol) are network filesystems.

There is nothing to stop you sharing an HFS+ physical filesystem via Samba (network filesystem) with Windows clients. Likewise, you could theoretically, share an NTFS filesystem with an OSX client via AFP.

You can just share a directory (folder) from your Mac by going to:

Apple menu (top left of screen) -> Preferences -> Sharing

Then set up like in red:

Another, brilliant option which I use for serving all my music to a SONOS system, is to get a little Raspberry Pi, that uses almost zero power, and add a 256MB USB memory stick (or maybe 4 off 64GB memory sticks as that can be cheaper) and RAID them together and make that available via Samba. It is silent and uses no power!

Answer 2

i do not know about your possibilities, but may be you could just use sambaserver. My router has a build in sambaserver all i have to do is plugin an USB disk.

You could also format your external hd to FAT32 filesystem. It should work for mac and windows, but it does not support files over 4GB. But its fine for document, photos and so.

good luck

Answer 3

I am not sure how well FTP would work but I assume you could run a FTP server in one or both systems and FTP client in the corresponding system. Most browsers can be a FTP client but there are also dedicated programs.

Mac OS X can read from NTFS drives. It also supports writing to NTFS, but that feature is disabled by default. I am not sure if it can work when the volume is online to Windows. Quick Tip: How to Write to NTFS Drives in OS X Mavericks explains it.

Enable writing to NTFS hard drives for free in Mac OS X (including El Capitan!) claims to provide read and write access to NTFS for free from Mac OS X.

You can use Apple's Boot Camp. I am not sure of the licensing requirements for the Windows you run in the Apple system but apparently you can use your existing license.

There is also Catacombae - HFSExplorer for accessing Mac-formatted hard disks and disk images from Windows.

There is also commercial software available. A popular one is Paragon HFS+ for Windows 10 and Paragon NTFS for Mac® 14 - Write / read access to NTFS under OS X El Capitan - Introduction.

I did not know what "sambaserver" is but it is a SMB server for UNIX/Linux as described in . SMB is built into Windows; see IT: How to Transfer Files Using Microsoft File Sharing for Windows.