Customer Reviews

Mediafour MacDrive 6 for Windows

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I'm a long-time Mac/Apple systems user (Apple IIe in 1983, Macs since the late 80s). Being in the visual effects business, I finally succumbed this year and bought my first PC, a nice Toshiba Qosmio laptop, so that I could use various Windows-only software packages, including 3-D apps. I have two Macs at home and various external HDD and files I wanted to be able to move data/media seamlessly between both platforms (furthermore, I'm looking to get a new MacPro tower when they come out, and run BootCamp to make that system dual-OS, and will need such functionality then).

So, MacDrive 6 was purchased and installed on day 1. I was instantly pleased--mac CDs and HDDs were swappable between my systems without a hitch. I was even able to mount my old 10GB firewire iPod and use it w/ iTunes on my Windows machine. All was well until...

A few weeks later I purchased Roxio's Easy Media Creator Suite 8. I'm a longtime user of the Toast/Popcorn products they make for the Mac platform and figured I'd stick with them (instead of other apps like Nero). That's when weird things started happening. It came to a head last week when I purchased a nice new Maxtor OneTouch III 1TB triple-interface external drive. The goal was to have a huge central store for media and backups for all my systems. Setup was to be a breeze, according to the documentation and all reviews/reports I'd read. Wrong. It comes pre-formatted for Mac, and between that and tests w/other drives, the net result was the same--initial drive recognition, followed by a sudden system crash, the dreaded stop error/blue screen. A reboot loop would ensue until the volume was unplugged/removed.

After several days of testing/problem-solving, I stumbled across a support doc on the MediaFour (maker of MacDrive 6) website, acknowledging a severe conflict between MacDrive 6 and Easy Media Creator 8. They apparently both have drivers dealing w/ mac volumes that will bring about the above crippling results until one or the other software package is un-installed. I've contacted both companies to see if an update/workaround to fix this is available or will be soon. Until then, I have Roxio's software uninstalled--a $70 coaster until this is resolved.

If MediaFour solves this problem--I'd boost my rating to 5 stars.

Watch out for trouble with MacDrive. I bought and installed MacDrive. It connected me great to an external USB hard drive that I shared with some Macs in the household.

But MacDrive cost me at least 40 hours of headaches and wasted time. MacDrive automatically defaults all your drives to Mac preferred drive. If you try to install software on your PC with a dual format Apple/PC disk, like TurboTax, your computer goes dumb. It tries to read the Mac portion of the disk and doesn't know what to do. It can't find the Windows commands.

Using Explorer or any other PC tools to find setup.exe or autorun fails, until you put the disk on a machine without MacDrive. Then it works fine.

This occasional incompatibility really causes headaches because you're unlikely to link it to the MacDrive software you installed 3 months ago. You'll go through lots of 'fixes' but never find the problem.

I called TurboTax support and went through a whole host of installer and autorun registry debugging and still couldn't get the TurboTax disk to install. When I had the problem with a Canon scanner installation months later, same story. Hours of debugging and on the phone with the Canon tech support.

I only found the problem by rebuilding my whole system and trying the trouble disk after each installed piece of software. The culprit was MacDrive.

It would be OK if MacDrive told you they were messing up your computer, or if they warned you you might have install failures later, or if they asked you do you want your PC to default to Mac. But they don't. It's lame.

To get around the problem here's the fix if you have MacDrive installed:
# Open "My Computer"
# Right-click on the CD/DVD drive containing the dual-format disc
# Choose "MacDrive -> Show Windows files"
# You can also globally set MacDrive to view the Windows files on a
dual-format disc by going to Start > Control Panel, selecting MacDrive,
selecting the "Settings" tab and checking "View Windows files" (under
"Dual-format CDs/DVDs).

MacDrive recognized all of my disks formatted for Mac OS and it was a snap to access them.

I got a MacBook Pro for Christmas and wanted to use it for at work, which is heavily MicroSoft. Because the largest BootCamp partition that allows the Mac to see the Windows files is 32GB, I needed another location to store data files. With MacDrive, I was able to store files on the Mac partition and access them from the Windows BootCamp partition.

It even reads my iPod :)

Installed this a few weeks ago, on my intel imac 20 (after successfully installing bootcamp).

I've had no problems at all- and can transparently access my Mac volume when running XP SP2 on the iMac.

Purchased this software in order to access Mac files on my PC. Easy to install, intuitive to operate and functioned as advertised.

I own a PC and a Mac, and was struggling to find a way to back them both up on the same external drive. This program made it possible!! Using Macdrive in combination with Disc Utility (Mac), Copy Cloner (Mac), and Ghost (PC), I was able to backup both PC and Mac on the same external drive. Even better the backups are bootable and I can access all the drives from either computer!

Macdrive is a wonderful product! Just install on PC, and you will have full access to all mac files including your Mac formatted drives and even your iPod!! Mediafour's website offers a trial version. Download it and try it for yourself:)

This allowed me to use the same backup drive for a MAC and a PC with no issues.