200GB from a Mac to Windows - ftp?

A Mac user doesn't really want to split his video files into 4GB chucks and send a HDD formatted FAT32 to a Windows user half way round the world - any ideas or experience regarding transferring 200GB of data assuming a good bandwidth and an adequate usage allowance?

XP should be OK with a ftp server but what about a Mac, Vista and/or Win7?

In reply to a post by 4M2:

A Mac user doesn't really want to split his video files into 4GB chucks and send a HDD formatted FAT32 to a Windows user half way round the world - any ideas or experience regarding transferring 200GB of data assuming a good bandwidth and an adequate usage allowance?

XP should be OK with a ftp server but what about a Mac, Vista and/or Win7?

Why would you have to split them in to 4 gig chunks and format it to FAT32 OSX can read NTFS as well i know this because i used to have a macbook and id transfer 12+gig vid files from the mac to my 7 pc and visa versa using a 1TB drive formatted in NTFS.

But if you dont want to do that then i recommend a program called team viewer its cross platform between windows osx and linux & it has remote desktop suport as well as file transfer me and a friend use it regularly for both reasons when he has problems with his pc hope this helps

Ash

OSX can't write to NTFS without 3rd party software

In reply to a post by mcclaw:

OSX can't write to NTFS without 3rd party software

Ahh my hard drive did come with a manager for OSX which i did use so possibly that made it writeable for me i wont lie i dont know too much about osx i had it a few month and didn't like it that much so i went back to my windows/linux comps lol.

Anyway yea so if you want go the internet transfer route id defo recommend ya take a look at team viewer its got some very nice options in it

Ash

You could format the drive to exFAT

ExFAT - Wiki

[ Note : You must install Windows update KB955704 to properly access exFAT drives in Windows XP ]

I'd say to attempt this on almost any kind of home broadband connection is a non-starter.

Even with a 10Mbit upload, we're looking at 4GB per hour at best so a transfer would take minimum of 2 days solid (longer if the connections are used for other things meantime). The method would need to allow restarting part way through (some but not all FTP implementations support this).

If this was to become a regular thing they could try something based on rsync at both ends, possibly involving setting up a VPN between the two locations and letting the transfers run in the background.

Services like Dropbox would be another possibility if both ends aren't online at the same time, or one party could buy some hosted server / webspace and send a link / credentials to download when ready.

As per the previous reply I think the practical method is for the files top be copied onto an NTFS formatted drive and posted / couriered. For any format other than NTFS or FATs Windows normally needs needs a filesystem driver.

If either end doesn't have free drive bays in their computer then they can buy a suitable caddy (you can get them with eSATA or USB3 as well as USB2 depending on what the computer supports).

Hard drives need to be well padded for transport - an SSD would be somewhat more rugged but would be rather more expensive for 200GB of usable storage.

But ultimately if someone has a use case (or business case) that requires shifting this much data they have to budget for it either way in terms of high speed internet bandwidth or transport costs as well as local storage (and backup).

In reply to a post by mcclaw:

OSX can't write to NTFS without 3rd party software

Yep, that seems to be the problem...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS-3G

is supposed to work for Mac OS X

If one end did send a drive formatted for MAC, I'm sure one or other of the linux liveCDs would be able to copy files from that onto an NTFS drive at the other end.

prizx,

Could the Mac machine be networked locally to a Windows machine and the 200GB of data written to an external NTFS drive (preferably in an enclosure over eSATA or usb3) connected to the Windows machine? The NTFS HDD could then be posted/couriered as a fragile package to the remote Windows user.

Unfortunately I have no experience with networking Mac to Windows and can not advise the folks regarding this issue...

In reply to a post by prlzx:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS-3G

is supposed to work for Mac OS X

If one end did send a drive formatted for MAC, I'm sure one or other of the linux liveCDs would be able to copy files from that onto an NTFS drive at the other end.

That's a good idea - if the Windows user is willing to do that...