I am currently using a basic 4 bay Drobo connected by usb to a pc. Is there a process for converting the Drobo so it can be used with a Mac without losing any files short of moving files temporarily to another drive and reformatting. Of note, all files on the Drobo are picture files.
hi neonot,
if your drobo is using the ntfs filesystem currently, then i think new macs are able to read windows data from ntfs.
there seem to be several utils mentioned that can mount ntfs volumes (such as ntfs mounter or a paragon utility), and even seems to be a feature in osx to read AND write from them, but i dont have any direct experience with those and am not sure if they could possibly cause problems with the drobo or not.
how much data do you have? - i guess 1 key thing would be to see what your main objective is? for example:
- if you just want to be able to access and read the files you already have then it might be ok.
- if you want to read and write, and use the drobo and upgrade it for more storage etc, ultimately only on a mac from now on, then it probably would be best to backup all of the pictures (and to verify that the backup is successful), and then to reformat on the mac with dashboard, and then to copy all the data back (and being image files, they should be able to be read on the mac without needing any conversions)