Simple Macbook Questions - 2

Thanks to all who helped me with my previous questions. I now have a question about simple networking.

Specifically, can a macbook access and use files located on a windows shared machine. You see, we have a windows machine (vista) in our office that is used for all out backups. With my current notebook, I simply backup (or restore) my files over the network to and from that machine. Would that still work with a mac or no?

Thanks again for answering some newbie questions.

 

Nope, Macs can't write to a Windows formatted drive, they can read it, however.

 

Actually, you can write to a shared network folder even if it is on Vista. But... I am currently experiencing a permissions issue with it (probably some setting in Vista I have to find). I have to experiment a bit with the sharing to see whats causing the exact issue. I'll play around with this tonight when I get home. I was able to get it working at one point, but after an update or two on the Vista machine it just stopped working.

 

You can read and write to any networked drive, may it be running Windows, Linux, BSD etc. given that you have permission to do so.
However, there is currently a problem with OS X Leopard that handicaps its networking capabilities with Vista. Leopard does not support SMB and therefore uses a modified version of samba to try and connect to Vista which is buggy. Hopefully it'll be fixed soon. Given that Apple has recognised the issue.

 

Oh, so I'm not going crazy then. I tried getting it to connect for quite some time over the past month or so but couldn't. Thanks for the info Budding!

 

Ah sorry then... guess I shouldn't have just assumed ^^;

 

Your right in the sense that if you take an external hard-drive formatted in NTFS and plug it in to a Mac, then OSX can't write to it. But in the case of a network share, its different in that the protocol acts as a bridge between the two (in this case the protocol is SMB).

 

there should be no problems with seeing Vista drive over the network, as you shouldn't have to mesh with any file sharing settings in OS X, any shared folder on the Vista machine should show up on the OS X machine no problem. and you should be able to re-write to that drive no problem as long as the settings on the Vista side allow it.

i don't know where some of these people are getting their "information"

 

There have been a lot of complaints that it doesn't work smoothly. I believe there have been several threads on here regarding this issue and problems getting Vista to share to OS X. Don't remember what they were, but there are (or were) issues.

But if you can, see if you can't get NFS to work instead of Samba. Not sure how to get NFS to work in windows though.

 

I'll give NFS a go when I get home tonight. Thanks for the tip.

 

Cool, let us know how that goes. I've never set it up in XP let alone Vista. My Linux box was setup for NFS shares for a while (before I had my HDD's go bad).

 

I was playing around with my Vista box and it turns out there was a piece of software on it that was confusing the networking: VMWare's Workstation. It had installed two additional virtual network adapters, so I believe that was the cause of the Mac not finding or playing nice with Vista's networking. After uninstalling it, I tried using SMB and immediately the Mac picked up the shares.

I don't use VMWare Workstation anymore so I kept it off for now until I need it again. Thanks for the tips guys!

Edit: By the way, I tried NFS but it doesn't work. Guess there's something else I have to do to get that protocol to work. None-the-less, I'm happy now that SMB works between the two computers.

 

yeah, a completely untouched Vista sytem shouldn't have problems networking with a Leopard machine, it it does, it is likely due to a small software issue.