MacDrive 6 - read/write Mac-formatted drives and discs on Windows

I just purchased a 300 gb external harddrive, already formated as a Mac HFS+ drive. i wanted to be able to use it as a backup disk for my PC and Mac computers; however, even with the new updated version of MacDrive 6, it doesnt work right.. i can copy files from the Mac to the disk no problem, read/copy them within windows, but when i try the vice versa, ie: copying files from windows to the hard drive, it freezes up the whole computer. i tried reformatting the disk in osx, but still no luck. now ive given up and am reformatting the disk within windows, but im not sure if this is the best way to deal with the problem...

any suggestions?

I tried Boot Camp. I am very happy with that!
I can see my Windows HD under MacOsX (i used fat32) but i cannot see the macosx part of my hd under windows.
So i downloaded the trial version of MacDrive.
But even that...shows nothing.
I am doing something wrong?
Any suggestions?
Thanks from a still cold Italy.

It came free with my Lacie HDD. Still have not tried it yet, planning on trying it soon.

Using MacDrive with Mac formatted disk to go between a PC and Mac is expontentially more reliable than using FAT32 drive (which Macs and PCs can both natively read and write to...theoretically).

MacDrive won't physically damage your drive, so if you had to RMA it, it's because either the drive went bad or you did something to damage it. As Eric pointed out above, it's likely you failed to unmount it. If you move drives just by unplugging them without notifying the system that you plan to do so, it's a crapshoot no matter what system or software you are using.

Also, FYI the "Safely Remove" option under Win200/XP actually can be a one step process if you just single click the icon in the System Tray. For some reason most people double click the icon resulting in the multistep dialog.

I use this daily to move projects from my home OS X machines to my work PC box. Works flawlessly. Everything it claims to be, and more.

I use macdrive extensively everyday as i bounce between my work G5's, my hp workstation and my tablet pc. I use a 100 gig, HFS formatted portable drive between them all. It works great PROVIDED you are religous about "ejecting" the disk on the macs AND you know how to safely remove usb drives from a pc.

This I believe is where most people have issues. Removing usb drives from a pc is not as easy as it is on a mac. It is usually a multistep process which can be a pain.

If you fail to do it then you can very quickly be in trouble and need to reformat.

All in all, its a great product and works as advertised.

I use macdrive extensively everyday as i bounce between my work G5's, my hp workstation and my tablet pc. I use a 100 gig, HFS formatted portable drive between them all. It works great PROVIDED you are religous about "ejecting" the disk on the macs AND you know how to safely remove usb drives from a pc.

This I believe is where most people have issues. Removing usb drives from a pc is not as easy as it is on a mac. It is usually a multistep process which can be a pain.

If you fail to do it then you can very quickly be in trouble and need to reformat.

All in all, its a great product and works as advertised.

We've had consistant problems with MacDrive. We eventually uninstalled it after 2 of our drives failed. Both the Mac and the PC were unable to recover the disks. They had to be RMA'd... and when you use all your available capacity, having to send some back sucks. I should mention these were 250 and 300 GB Firewire removable drives. Possibility that MacDrive just doesn't have good support for higher end drives yet.

Is there any tool available for the other way around? - Using NTFS on OSX?

I know OSX can read NTFS, but I want to write to the disk as well...

I can confirm that this works great if you've got an intel mac set up to dual boot Windows and OS X. I can see all of my HFS+ volumes (firewire as well as internal) and they all work as expected from within Windows XP.