Backing up Macintosh files on Windows PC

[Kim Stahnke]

We are having a problem with files backed up from our Mac machines to a
Win2k Pro computer. The files 'sometimes' get corrupted so that they will
not work on the Mac after trensferring them back. At the same time their
icon dissapears and is replaced with a "PC" file icon.
The disk on the Win pc is NTFS formatted. We cannot find a pattern in which
files work and which don't.
Can anyone tell us what to do?
And, We have heard something about single/double data-forks on pc/mac. Can
this have something to do with the problem?

Thanks in advance,
Kim Stahnke

 

[Sandy]

this have something to do with the problem?

Yes

Most newer Mac apps only store data in the Data fork - which isn't lost when
transferred to other platforms, however some apps (usually older ones) still
store information in the Resource Fork.
To retain this information, either use a Mac backup utility (such as
Retrospect), or before copying files to another platform encode them on the
Mac to either MacBinary (.bin) format, or compress them using StuffIt (.sit)
or zip. Aladdin Systems' (www.aladdinsys.com) StuffIt utilities can
compress/decompress, encode/decode all of these formats.

-Sandy

 

[Kim Stahnke]

Most newer Mac apps only store data in the Data fork - which isn't lost when
transferred to other platforms, however some apps (usually older ones) still
store information in the Resource Fork.

Thanks, Sandy. So it has nothing to do with FAT/NTFS?
--Kim

 

[Rod Dorman]

Thanks, Sandy. So it has nothing to do with FAT/NTFS?

FAT doesn't support alternate file streams, thats why you can't setup
a SFM share on a FAT drive.

 

[Starb]

Hi Kim

Yes, that is your problem.

Although you query has already received a good answer, it is perhaps worth
pointing out why this happens.

Basically, when you copy the file from a Mac volume (thats on a PC/STM
volume) to another device that does not have explicit Mac support, the data
and resource forks (as you expected) get flattened into one file. Once this
happens, the file is pretty much useless with the exception that it can be
opened with a text edit to extract text data, ie if it were a word doc you
could retrieve some text info but if it was an application, it is now shot.

I raise this point because I see so many Mac users of STM volumes carefully
backing up the files and folder (via the PC) only to find when they restore
then - well, you guess what's happened! Make sure you backup app suports
MacFiles such as TapeWare, Retrospect, etc.

Regards
Starb