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Reading HSF+ on Windows


kendellrt

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I have a Drobo that I have been using on an iMac for the last few years.  As such, I have partitioned the Drobo using the HSF+ file system.  I keep photos, music, movies, TV, and other type media on it.  I like the RAID setup it uses because it is easy to use, and helps me prevent data loss.  I have mentioned lately that I have replaced the iMac with a Windows machine.  I plan on using the iMac for a backup machine, and moving the Drobo over to the Windows machine.  The only issue is that I can only read the data on the Drobo with my Windows box if browsing through the network.  That is very slow.  What I would like to do is temporarily transfer my info to another device, re-partition and format the Drobo to NTFS and then attach it directly to the Windows machine.  One easy way to do that would be to find a third party app or plugin that would allow Windows 8 to natively read an HSF+ partition.  Does anyone have any suggestions for a utility to do this?  If I attach the Drobo to the Windows computer it can see that the Drobo is connected using Disk Management, but it does not mount or show up My Computer, nor can I browse it through File Explorer.  Therefor I can't read or write anything from it.  The amount of data on the Drobo is so large that if I try and transfer it directly to the Windows computer via the network, it usually fails or times out somewhere along the way.  I'm also open for other suggestions about how to get this done.  I CANNOT lose this data, especially the photos and videos, which number over 70k in total.  As far as space goes on my computers, this is what I'm looking at.  I have about 250GB available on the iMac, the Drobo has about 1.5TB used, but I can cut some of that out (not much though), and the Windows PC has a 1TB drive with about 800GB free.  I was thinking that I could maybe get a large external drive, partition it in NTFS, connect it to the iMac, and transfer the data to it.  Then I could connect the Drobo to the Windows PC, partition and format it in NTFS, plug the external drive into the Windows PC, and then transfer the data back to the Drobo.  I'm sure that there is an easire way to do all of this, though.  I am also wondering if Mac OS 10.8 will be able to read and write to an NTFS partition if I use that on a new external drive.  Any advice as to how to accomplish this task is welcome.

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When you say through the network, do you mean using Samba? Have you tried transferring files in smaller segments?

 

Something seems off with your setup if its having those issues. I had a similar issue where transfer speeds would drop to zero and stay there mid-transfer. Turned out one of the hard drives was failing. Try using something like CrystalDiskInfo to check SMART report.

 

Enable writing to NTFS hard drives on Mac OS X. By default Mac OSX can't write to NTFS drives, just read so you need to use methods like in the link to get around that.
Edited by AZNguyen

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I guess I could try transferring in smaller chunks.  I know there are third party apps or plug ins that you can install on Windows to allow for read/write privileges on HSF+ partitions.  I have tested the HDDs and they all test ok.  I can also try some of the apps listed in the link.  It's not like I need it for a long time, I just need it long enough to copy the data to a temp storage place, and then reformat and transfer it back to the Drobo.

Edited by kendellrt

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

I have installed NTFS-3G and OSXFuse on my iMac so that I can copy all of the info on my HSF+ partitioned Drobo to an external NTFS volume. There is about 1.6TB worth of data to move over. The NTFS drive is mounting fine, and r/w permissions are working seamlessly to the user. Any suggestions for copying that much info, aside from copy and paste?

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