Filesharing OSX-XP revisited

[headlines]

Hi there!

I am sure this topic must have been discussed 1000 times, but I am stuck and inspite of reading in various bulletins for days now, just don't seem to find the answer! I had tried a Macbook Pro over Christmas and returned it exactly for that reason. Now I bought one for good and have to figure it out!

The problem: For some 20 years I have been developing hundreds of lectures on PowerPoint. Together with thousands of pictures and movies I have some 15 GB of data accumulated that I am working with. I would like to switch to Keynote for various reasons, and along with it to OSX. But it will take a long time to finish the move. In the meantime I have to give presentations wit PowerPoint and work with what I have. So I use Fusion to run XP Pro as a VM. So far so good. I want to keep one tree of data (My Documents) on which I can work from both sides, the Mac and my Windows desktop PC, and I just seem to be unable to find a slick way of accomplishing that. Which option is the best?

1. Somehow create a FAT 32 partition on the internal drive of my MBP which both, OSX and XP, can see and which can be synchronized with my desktop. For the latter I have been using LapLink Pro from within Windows, and possibly I could continue doing so from within the XP VM, unless file names get changed on the Mac, in which case I would have a problem, since Laplink would then duplicate all of those on my desktop PC. Besides, I have not been able to create a volume on the internal drive of my MBP which shows up under XP in my VM.

2. Use some program which enabled Windows to read/write on a Mac - no experience with that!

3. Create a NTFS partition on my internal drive and use some program enabling OSX to not only read but write to that. I have the same problem as in 1. in that I don't seem to be able to create such a partition which will show up under XP in my VM.

4. Use shared folders: For some reason, Fusion will not let me activate file sharing on my VM. I don' remember which settings I used when I created it and I hope I had checked that box. If not, what then? Also, how would I then synchronize the files with my desktop PC? Up to now having My Documents both, on my laptop and my desktop, was also my way of securing my data so that I didn't need additional backups.

I'm sure there are perfect solutions out there and would be happy even for some links where I can read up on them!

Thanks!

[Xipper]

You are making this more complicated than you need to. Have you

added any shared folders to the VM? You can't enable shared folders if

there aren't any folders defined.

Once you get the shared

folders setup, go into your VM and map a network drive to your

documents folder (or wherever) such as
.hosts\Shared

Folders\Documents

Then go into the VM, properties of your My

Documents and repoint your My Documents folder to your mapped drive or

a folder within it.

Lastly, use the search function or Google to find help for sharing

folders either through the shared folders or through OSX as you would

on any standard network. I guarantee you aren't the first person to think of it or run into this.

[headlines]

Thanks, Xipper!

Actually, I had just experimented with the very thing, mapped network drives. Works nice, seems to be a solution to the problem, indeed!

Unfortunately I ran into another problem with that: When I restart XP in Fusion, the mapped drives are all gone, even though I checked the reconnect box. Do you have any hints how to keep those drives there?

I was actually a bit surprised how difficult it is to find clear instructions about filesharing and file synchronization between OSX and XP. Originally, I thought Apple would provide that info, since they do quite actively pull uswers out of the Microsoft camp. However, I cannot even get a FAT partition going on my internal drive, save a bootcamp one, and that after searching and reading quite a few Apple docs! Of course, I am new in the Apple camp an meet with trouble every time I turn around, anyway. Cant wait to really feel at home there!

[jegbook]

Headlines,

What exactly do you mean by "file synchronization between OS X and XP"? Do you want to have multiple copies of your files for redundancy/backup purposes?

If you are not looking to have multiple copies of the files, it would seem you don't need any synchronization at all (to me, synchronization means that I have the "same" file in two different places and that I can modify it in either place and the synchronization will update the file in the location that I didn't edit. Does that make sense?)

A few things to keep in mind: all office files are fully compatible between Mac and Windows without having to do anything special (addendum: if you have Office 2007 .docx files there is a hoop or two, and if you have VB script in a file, that may be an issue as well, but by and large, for your average Word, Excel, or Powerpoint file, there is no problem in opening and modifying the file in either OS X or XP).

For other major file formats, e.g- jpeg, TIF, mpeg, mp3, txt, the OS is irrelevant. Open and edit in OS X or XP at will and there shouldn't be any problem with going into the other OS with the same file and doing what you will with it. The beauty of standards.

All that said, let me explain what I do to access my data from various places I might need it.

I have a MacBook with a 160GB hard drive that is partitioned 100GB HFS+ journaled and 40GB NTFS (partitioning thanks to Boot Camp, NTFS thanks to the Win installer CD). I have XP on the NTFS and OS 10.5.4 on the HFS+ partition, and most of the time I boot into OS X. I keep ALL of my data in one place only, because I don't want to think about syncrhonization. If I only have the data once: the only copy is the most up-to-date copy. My data is on my HFS+ partition (this is for various reasons, but the best technical reason is that OS X can't natively write to NTFS). I use Time Machine on my HFS+ partition for backing it up, so I have backups of my data. I use Fusion to run my XP Boot Camp install or a Vista VM (what I'm typing in now). I have Fusion set up with Shared Folders for both XP and Vista so that I can access the data on my HFS+ partition. This works great. Again, I don't think about having multiple copies of my data, I just have access to the same data from all OSes. In the instances that I boot into XP directly (no OS X), I have a program called MacDrive which allows XP to read HFS+ (i.e. Mac) formatted hard drives and can access the HFS+ partition of my internal hard drive from within XP. Again, same data, I just have access to it from any direction. With a little trickery in the .vmx file of the Vista VM, I can even use VMWare Player (a free Windows app) to run the Vista VM I created with Fusion when I'm booted into Windows XP (the Vista VM residing on my HFS+ partition, but accessible via MacDrive). Ain't that a kick in the pants. (I must admit, I think it's really cool that I can run the same VM from two different OSes. Well done VMWare!

[headlines]

Thanks for sharig your thoughts, jegbook!

My situation in more detail: I have always worked with two PC´s, one stationary in my office and a notebook to take on the road for presentations and working on things while travelling. That is where file synchronization comes in since I might change files or create new files on either computer, but want all files to equally be available on both systems. No need for backups, this way, because I always have two sets of files anyway. In Windows, the LapLink program was a convenient way to do that, because it found the differences between the folders on either machine in a hurry and synchronized them. I would come home, plug in the network cable, click a shortcut, wait a couple of seconds - done!

Now my notebook is a MBP while my stationary PC is an XP machine, and that is what I am chewing on. As you write, the fileformats themselves are no problem. The only problem would be that possibly non-standard filenames (other than 83 and file names containing special characters) might get changed under OSX when using an internal FAT volume to write them. NTFS would be better in that way, but then a good solution would be needed for OSX to be able to write to that. Using HFS and MacDrive, as you suggested, might be the best. I wonder: Cannot MacDrive be used from within Fusion to read/write to the host harddrive directly? Will that drive show up in a virtual machine for MacDrive to use?

Another way is filesharing. I have copied My Documents onto my MBP and activated sharing for that folder. Then I mapped a network drive from witin the virtual XP, and it worked. However, I have now a problem because these mapped drives have a way of disappearing when rebooting windows in the VM. If I should suffer a system crash while giving a PowerPoint presentation from XP within Fusion, and then I have to restart XP and loose the mapped drives, having to manually reconnect them, etc., now that would be a real interruption to the flow!

So, part of the problem is that I have to be able to keep going with my Windows-stuff on my MBP because I will not be able to change everything to Keynote that quickly, that is why I turned to Fusion.

[jegbook]

Indeed, your situation is a bit tricky.

Have you checked the Settings of your VM to make sure that Shared Folders are set for "enabled on Power On"? I haven't had any trouble with Fusion and Shared Folders, so I'm surprised to hear of your experience.

As for MacDrive, it gets confused with activation going between native XP boot and VM. Turns out it doesn't matter as only one OS can have access to a volume at a time. Since OS X is booted off the HFS+ partition, it's not available to the VM anyway. So I use Shared Folders and they work great.

What about an external hard drive for all of your data? I have a MacAlly enclosure that I put a 2.5" 120GB barracuda. It's firewire 400 and USB 2 and can run off bus power in both cases and is very portable.

Your fileharing could work, too. Put all the data on your HFS+ partition and share it out to your desktop.

Good luck!

[headlines]

As it turnes out, the mapped network drives remain connected, they just do not shop up in the Windows Explorer after restarting. I can enter the drive number, however, and get connected even though they were not shown. So that works pretty well.

One problem left: I installed Office 2003 in my XP VM, looked at my first presentation with Powerpoint and was thrilled to see that it worked! The smile wiped off my face with the next presentation which had a movie clip embedded. Powerpoint will not store those clips in the file, but links to them. Apparently, it doesn't use a relative link, but an absolute one for that purpose. Even tough I changed the drive number of my mapped drive so that the path should be identical, movies embedded in a Powerpoint presentation will not play. If I erase them and embed them anew, they work fine! But there are hundreds of such clips, and even if I changed them all on my MBP, I would run them out of synch with my XP machine, where they work fine in the first place.

Any idea how and why a path might be resolved differently in the Fusion VM using a mapped network drive than it will be on an XP machine accessing a local harddrive? Any way to fix that?

[headlines]

Hello again!

Now I have more info: Keynote gives me an error upon importing said Powerpoint files: "The movie clip "/Users/rs/.Trash/My Documents 10-13-36/Movies/Data.mpg" is invalid".

Normally the path to that clip ought to be simply My Documents/Movies/Data.mpg. Or, may be, something like ../Movies/Data.mpg, because the Powerpoint file sits in a folder "Presents" and the Folder "Movies" is next to it on the same level.

How in the world can links get changed in that way when copying files from a PC to a Mac? I know that on the first try of copying My Document via the network all that got copied was an alias or shortcut, as it is called in Windows. But now I physically have the files on my Mac harddrive and can think of no way how the link could have changed unless it is a relative link and the path via the mapped network drive gets resolved falsely. But why would that be?

Anybody have any suggestions?