Lightroom Catalogue external drive to be accessed by Mac and PC

I have Mac 10.9.1 OS and Windows 7. I have Lightroom 5 Calatogue on external firewire drive currently running from the Mac. I want to open the catalogue from my Windows 7 Lightroom 5. I can open the catalogue, but cannot see the file structure in the left pane.
Should I reformat the drive to be compatible with both platforms (after backing up of course)? What format options should I select? Is this done on the Mac or PC? Am I likely to run into any problems?
For the last few years I ran the catalogue from the PC and Mac using a firewire external drive, but this has been replaced by a smaller physical drive which is better for my travels. I used Windows XP in those days and Snow Leopard.
Thanks in advance. Gary Wornell

Gary Wornell wrote:
I want to open the catalogue from my Windows 7 Lightroom 5. I can open the catalogue, but cannot see the file structure in the left pane.
It is surprising to me that you were able to get this far. If the drive is formated in HFS+ then you would not be able to view the files on the drive from Windows.
Should I reformat the drive to be compatible with both platforms (after backing up of course)? What format options should I select? Is this done on the Mac or PC? Am I likely to run into any problems?
Yes this is most likely the problem and the fix. Use Disk Utility on the Mac to confirm that the drive is currently formated with HFS+ which would be why it doesn't work in Windows.
When reformatting you should use FAT or exFAT, either one will work. You can format the drive from Windows or Mac as both OSes can do it.
If you want to avoid the headache of reformating you can do what johnbeardy said and purchase 3rd party software to add HFS+ support to Windows. Your options are Paragon or MacDrive. Normally I would be wary of this since file systems are something important that you don't want to use unreliable software for but Paragon and MacDrive both look reputable.
Am I likely to run into any problems?
I would be slightly concerned about sharing a Lightroom catalog between Windows and Mac. Hopefully Adobe does not do anything stupid to introduce incompabilities between the two platforms. Make sure to keep the version numbers of Lightroom close on the two machines.

Similar Messages

How to format an external hard drive - to be accessed by mac and pc

I have four large video files on my mac pro that I to transfer to a friend's external hard drive. It's a new hard drive so is unformatted at present. My friend has a Vista laptop and XP PC which I know won't recognise a Mac formatted drive.
What is the easiest and quickest way to transfer the files (approx 90GB each) to the hard drive. I did consider networking but that might take ages!! :-(( Once on the external drive, my friend wants edit them.
Thanks for your help in advance.

Format ur external Hard Disk with HFS format then access it from windows by (HFS Explorer) here is the link of that software
http://hem.bredband.net/catacombae/hfsx.html
you can extract anything from HFS format hard disks..the program is free also

Previously windows used external drive to be used in mac (and windows)

i´ve just bought a macbook and planned to use a couple of external drives i previously used on my pc with time machine and whatnot. only it seems they are write-protected in mac os, so they can´t be used as back-up drives. do i have to format them again using mac, or do it in windows, or is there a way around this? and can it be done so both mac and windows recognizes it as writable?
thanks

Dave Sawyer wrote:
They're probably formatted NTFS, which Mac OS X can read but not write. There are third-party NTFS drivers, one open-source and one commercial, but you can just reformat the drive as FAT32 (MS-DOS format in Disk Utility) and it will work just fine with both your Mac and Windows systems.
If the OPs intent is to use it with Time Machine, the external drive needs to be formatted HFS+ (Mac OS Extended (Journaled) via Disk Utility. I believe there is a Windows app that permits viewing of HFS+ drives. Since you have a 'couple' of external HDDs, it's probably best to use a dedicated HDD just for TM backups.

How do I format a new lacie external drive to work on a mac and pc?

i have a new lacie external drive. I want to partition it into 2 parts, one to use in Macs and the other in PCs.
How do I do this in Disk Utility?
thanks!

Click on the entire drive in the Disk Utility's sidebar, then on the Partition tab, and set it up. Format one partition as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and the other as MS-DOS.
(84527)

Had PSE 8 installed on PC Windows 7 with a catalog backup on an external drive. Now have a Mac with OS Mavericks. If I install PSE 12 or Lightroom on this Mac can I use the cat. backup from Windows or must I start from scratch

Had pse 8 on a Windows 7 PC with a catalog backup on an external drive. Now have a Mac with OS Mavericks. If install pse 12 or Lightroom on the Mac will I be able to use the old catalog backup or must I start from scratch.

If you made a full catalog backup using the organizer's backup command, and you did it to a removable drive, yes, you can restore it to the mac. A backup made on discs will not work, though.

I have lost my Safari app and all the bookmarks that go with it. I have tried to download my back-up on external drive but cannot access it. Tried a start with C key held down but still no access to the back-up app.

I have lost my Safari app and all the bookmarks that go with it. I have tried to download my back-up on external drive but cannot access it. Tried a start with C key held down but still no access to the back up app.
Have used Superduper app. to back up and checked back-up occasionally to see if all files present and appeared OK.
I had previously started machine using original CD #1 to try and replace Eudora which was acting up. Did not knowingly touch Safari.
Running iMAC System 10.4.11
How can I successfully download from the Maxtor back-up?
Ivan

Further info.
I checked the content of my other back-up and found the bookmark Bookmarks.plist in the library under Safari
Dumped the existing copy in the computer and drag-dropped the back up. All bookmarks restored.
Solved the Stickies problem by using Spotlight to find file "stickiesdatabase" and did a drag- drop to replace file. All data restored.
Re Ical data loss. Used Spotlight to find iCal document in Library - Preferences where I found com.apple.iCal.plist in folder.
Got ready to make change but did not immediately remove file. When I returned to Preferences folder to grab above document,
the readable descriptors had been changed to code consisting of some upper case letters and/or single symbols!
So now I cannot tell which is the symbol iCal.plist
Thanks for leading me so far, but how do I find that plist for my calendar?

Bug report with proposed solution for mounting external drives for ftp access

Hello Guys,   I registered to inform you about something I would classify as a bug. I realized this when I used an external drive with my WD My Cloud and trying to access the drive via ftp. It simply was not visible on the ftp, but was accessible as samba share. I digged a bit in the scripts and found this:  /etc/init.d/mountDataVolume.sh   [...]
## initialze bind mount dir (/nfs)
/usr/local/sbin/updateShareBindMntDir.sh --init
[...]  /usr/local/sbin/updateShareBindMntDir.sh  [...]
init_mounts()
mount | grep -q "${SHARE_BIND_MNT_DIR}/"
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
# initial clean up of MNT dir
rm -rvf ${SHARE_BIND_MNT_DIR}/*
fi
for D in `find /shares/ -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -type d -not -name ".*"`; do
share_name=$(basename $D)
add_mount "${share_name}"
done
[...]   The init_mounts() function searches /shares for directories (find -type >d<) and bind mounts these to SHARE_BIND_MNT_DIR (default: /nfs) by calling add_mount(). This is the directory where ftp users will drop in after logging in. The problem: find -type d will not find symlinks and external drives are represented by a symlink from /shares to /var/media/EXTERNALDRIVE I propose adding the following code at the end of init_mounts()   for D in `find /shares/ -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -type l -not -name ".*"`; do
share_name=$(basename $D)
add_mount "${share_name}"
done That will look for symlinks in /shares and call add_mount() for each symlink to bind mount it to SHARE_BIND_MNT. I think this is not intended aka a bug because I found this comment for add_mount(): # - If <share_name> is a symlink to an external volume, then create the bind mount
# directly to the external volume.As it seems from this comment add_mount() supports symlinks but init_mounts does not feed it any.   I tried this solution myself and it works flawlessly.   Yours sincerely,schnip

Nice find!

Can I use my late 2006 mac mini as an external drive for my late 2012 mac mini?

I have a (late 2006) Mac mini that I would like to use as an external drive for my (late 2012) Mac mini. Is this possible and can anyone suggest what cables would be needed. I am aware that the ports are very different i.e firewire and thunderbolt. Thanks in advance!

- You can boo the old Mac in Targe Disk Mode and connect the two via FireWire (FW) You will need a FW 400 to FW 800 cable or a FW 800 or FW 400 cable and appropriate adopters
How to use and troubleshoot FireWire target disk mode - Apple Support
- Use the old Mac normally and setup Disk Sharing and access the old Mac via the network. The old Mac's disk will show up under Devices on the new Mac. One you set up the old Mac yo do not need mouse or keyboard or monitor. You can also setup Screen sharing and actually use the old Mac from the new Mac.
- Remove the HD from the old Mac and place it in an external USB enclosure of dock and connect it to the new Mac

I have my Time Machine on an external drive (not connected to Airport Extreme) and I have an external HD attached to airport extreme. Is it possible to have Time Machine backUp computer HD AND external HD connected to Airport Extreme. How?

I have my Time Machine on an external drive (not connected to Airport Extreme) and I have an external HD attached to airport extreme. Is it possible to have Time Machine backUp computer HD AND external HD connected to Airport Extreme. How?

Is it possible to have Time Machine backUp computer HD AND external HD connected to Airport Extreme.
Sorry, but no.
Time Machine will backup your Mac, but not the hard drive attached to the AirPort Extreme.
Time Machine will back up a hard drive only if it is attached directly to your Mac via USB or FireWire.

My MacBook Pro hard drive is almost full and I wish to store my Aperture Library on an external drive, how do I do this and is the use of USB2 suitable or do I need to use a Firewire external hard drive?

My MacBook Pro hard drive is almost full and I wish to store my Aperture Library on an external drive, how do I do this and is the use of USB2 suitable or do I need to use a Firewire external hard drive?

You'll get better performance if you use a Firewire hard drive (especially if you buy a 7200 RPM drive). Firewire's IO speed is significantly faster than USB 2. USB 2 has a theoretical max speed of 480 Mbps except that it has extremely high over-head. The fastest speeds you can typically get are about 300 Mbps. Firewire, on the other hand, has very little overhead. The fastest speeds you can get are very nearly 800 Mbps. You will typically be constrained by the maximum read/write speed of the drive, not the speed of the I/O on the Firewire bus. Now if you had one of those nice shiny new Macs with the Thunderbolt I/O and a Thunderbolt drive (Light Peak) ... I think they alter space and time so that your data arrives before you know you want it.
Also... unless you want to buy a solid state drive (very expensive), try to keep your hard drives from becoming much more than about 60% full if you want great performance. A nearly "full" hard drive is, on average, only about half as fast as the same hard drive when nearly empty.
USB 2 will work perfectly fine... just not as fast.
Also... it's much safer to move the entire Aperture library than to "relocate masters". Your images must be managed. You can Aperture manage them, or you can manage them. But someone has to manage them. If you "relocate" them so that they are no longer stored inside the Aperture library then you'll need to work out a system of how you decide to organize things and it's critically important that you don't start moving files around or deleting things without Aperture's knowledge. If you do, you'll break the links to your masters and start having problems with missing masters. If you have Aperture manage the library then you don't need to worry about any of that stuff.... it's safer.
Do make backups (use the Aperture Vault or use some other backup program, but make sure you back up your work if you care about it.) There are only two kinds of hard drives in the world: (1) those that have failed and (2) those that are going to fail. There are no exceptions to this rule. Hard drives are cheap. Backup software is built into Aperture and into your Mac.

I have CS6 on my iMac. I want to load it onto an external drive to use off my Mac Air. I have the serial number. How do I do this without having to subscribe to CC?

I have CS6 on my iMac. I want to load it onto an external drive to use off my Mac Air. I have the serial number. How do I do this without having to subscribe to CC?

Note the min-requirements for PS CS6 on a Mac.
Mac OS
Multicore Intel® processor with 64-bit support
Mac OS X v10.6.8 or v10.7
1GB of RAM
2GB of available hard-disk space for installation; additional free space required during installation (cannot install on a volume that uses a case-sensitive file system or on removable flash-based storage devices)
1024×768 (1280×800 recommended) resolution display with 16-bit color and 256MB (512MB for Extended) of VRAM
OpenGL 2.0-capable system
DVD-ROM drive
Nancy O.

I want to format my external drive so that my new imac and my pc can read and write ,what should i do?

i want to format my external drive so that my new imac and my pc can read

Start by partitioning the drive as required for the Mac:
Drive Partition and Format
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Apply button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
Now click on the Erase tab in the main menu, then select ExFAT from the Format Type dropdown menu. Click on the Erase button. This format is read/write on both the Mac and the PC. If you have a problem with it on the PC, then format the drive the same way using the Windows formatter.

My time machine backup external hard drive has failed. I have a newer external drive already connected to my MAC but can't figure out how to get Time Machine to set up on it?

My time machine backup external hard drive has failed. I have a newer external drive already connected to my MAC but can't figure out how to get Time Machine to set up on it

http://pondini.org/TM/21.html

Hello. I keep my IPhoto library (about 90GB) on an external HD and am trying to back it up to another external drive. Both are formatted Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled). Recently, backup has failed from the start due to error 36. Howtoresolve?

Hello. I keep my iPhoto library (about 90GB) on an external HD and am trying to back it up to another external drive. Both are formatted Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled) and both check out when scanned with Disk Utility. Recently, backup has failed from the start due to error 36. Any ideas how to resolve? Also, what's the maximum recommended size for an iPhoto library file? Thx!

Since you can't drag the library to the other EHD for the backup see if you can duplicate it (if you have enough room on the drive) by selecting it and typing Command+d (duplicate).
If you do rebuild the library without a backup and it goes awry you won't lose your photos but you may lose your orgnaizational efforts. So try the following:
Fix #1
Launch iPhoto with the Command+Option keys held down and rebuild the library.
Select the options identified in the screenshot.
Fix #2
Using iPhoto Library Manager to Rebuild Your iPhoto Library
Download iPhoto Library Manager and launch.
Click on the Add Library button, navigate to your Home/Pictures folder and select your iPhoto Library folder.
Now that the library is listed in the left hand pane of iPLM, click on your library and go to the File ➙ Rebuild Library menu option
In the next window name the new library and select the location you want it to be placed.
Click on the Create button.
Note: This creates a new library in the location of your choosing based on the LIbraryData.xml file in the library and will recover Events, Albums, keywords, titles and comments but not books, calendars or slideshows. The original library will be left untouched for further attempts at fixing the problem or in case the rebuilt library is not satisfactory.
NOTE: Fix 2 above might be the method you might want to try first with iPLM creating the new library on your second EHD. If it works that would get your backup copy on the second EHD at the same time as repairing it. If it does'nt work then go back to Fix 1.
OT

I placed my aperture library on a 1 TB external drive (the file is 300 GB) and Aperture churns and churns but will not open the file. I don't know if the file is too large or if it is the external drive or what? any ideas? Smaller files will open.

I placed my aperture library on a 1 TB external drive (the file is 300 GB) and Aperture churns and churns but will not open the file. I don't know if the file is too large or if it is the external drive or what? any ideas? Smaller files will open. This is very annoying.

If this is an external USB drive, you must understand that USB is really, really slow. There may be nothing wrong except for that.
In my opinion, USB external drives are only acceptable for backups, and to get "near Hard Drive" performance, you need FireWire.

Lightroom Catalogue external drive to be accessed by Mac and PC

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for