External drive going between Apple Macbook and Windows desktop

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Ashley King

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I'm trying to help a friend who has got an error pop up "lrcat=0bytes" (or something close to this).

He works with an external drive between a Macbook and a Windows desktop. Having spent the day Saturday on the laptop, he spent Sunday on the desktop. Monday morning has thrown up the error.

Does anybody have any suggestions please?
 
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How is that drive formatted? Macs can read an NTFS formatted disk, but they can't write to it without special non-Apple software.
 
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Hi Johan,

I can't remember the exact name of the format but it is the one compatible for both Mac and Windows to read. He and I use the same drives formatted the same. He's been using this configuration for some weeks now. I haven't had any trouble but I only use Mac.
 
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I've just confirmed with my friend that his drive was NTFS formatted. Mine must be too. As I said, he's been running on the same configuration for some weeks without special software to write to the drive.
 
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Like I said, Macs can't write to an NTFS formatted disk. As long as you've only read information from that disk, you would not have had a problem. Another possibility might be that you did have some NTFS driver installed without even realizing it, and that a recent system update made it obsolete. How to Write to NTFS Drives on a Mac
 
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I use a MacAir in the field and Windows as my main workstation.

Despite the fact that I am familiar with the challenges of trying to use drives between both cultures, I have been burnt once too often. Eventually an EHD will be used which will be incompatible for various reasons (and often when you are trying to help someone).

This link ... will give you some info on the constraintsd involved. How to Share an External Drive Between a Mac and a PC. I am not sure how current this is... just giving you the link as a heads up to the variables involved.

I use an external hard drive on my Mac purely as a backup for my images. Sharing Lr images and catalogs between machines with the same o/s has its own risks. These risks increase substantially when moving between operating systems.

It may be worth trying to do a test transfer of the catalog via a usb fob and see if the catalog can be opened on the other machine.
 
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Ashley King said:
We are going to check. Mine is Mac OS Extended and lrcat contains file info. I don't know how he ended up on NTFS. Thanks for the guidance so far.
Click to expand...

AFAIK, a Windows PC cannot read or write to MacOS Extended...
 
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ExFat works nicely both ways. I've been using it Win/Mac for years.
 
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