How to transfer files from a Mac (OS9) to a Window 7 (or XP) PC using a direct ethernet connection

2

I have a Promise NAS4300 server on which the Windows protocol is not working. Therefore I can no longer access the files on it from Windows. However it does have AppleTalk and by using an abandoned MAC (OS9) I managed to access the NAS and can copy files to an external USB drive. (Note that my knowledge of MAC's is minimal I had never even seen one before)

The problemn is it's incredibly slow, I suspect the USB might be V1 not 2. I have 280Gb to transfer and it does about 1-2 Gb in nearly 2 hours! Therefore I thought file sharing would be a much faster and feasible method.

I first tried to set up file sharing by sharing a folder on the PC, connecting both computers to my work network, enabling TCP on the MAC and assigning a suitable IP address. No luck. I also tried a direct MAC - PC connection using both straight-through and cross-connected cables and suitable IP addresses again but still no joy.

I tried to ping the MAC from the PC with no success (I couldn't figure out how to ping the PC from the MAC). I guess if I can't ping the MAC there is no connection so sharing would never work.

I googled of course and found many articles on setting up file sharing- but none seemed to be for OS9 - all for OS X which seems much easier.

Some sites suggest you use smb://ip address/share for accessing the PC but it doesn't work - I think it even gave me a syntax error. Nor does it work without the smb. Other advice which I tried was to turn off the Win Firewall, and adjust the network sharing properties to allow PUBLIC sharing. The folder I shared on the PC was to EVERYONE.

Surely it can't be that difficult? Could a MAC expert please give me step-by-step instructions for MAC OS9 to Win 7 (or XP)? I would be so grateful! PS: Sorry about the length of this problem description!

Edit by author: On further reflection and reading helpful answers and comments it appears that the limiting factor in the slow transfer is the MAC's ethernet speed. I suspect it might be only the slow 10 megabit/s and not 100. Anyone know? The NAS supports 100 at least. This limitation would apply to getting the data from either the NAS to the MAC internal or USB drives.

The fastest solutions now appear to be:

  1. Read the NAS hard drive on a Window PC. However I presume Promise use a proprietry partition format. I tried it and Disk Manager couldn't identify the drive. Maybe someone knows, and I'll probably post that as a separate post.
  2. Borrow a modern Mac with OS X to do the transfers
  3. Access the NAS using the only other working protocol i.e. Linux. Again I may post that separately. Drawback is that I have no knowledge of Linux and when I tried the built-in utility to list the shares on the NAS it couldn't find the NAS.

Thanks all for all help so far.

PS: Promise support last suggestion was to use a windows data recovery utility to try and recover data off the NAS drive it. Don't know if this would be possible.

EDIT 4/10: You'd think they would have a suitable utility as this must be a fairly common problem! Anyone interested, have posted new question: "Does anyone have experience recovering the files from a Promise NS4300 server disk?". IN other words want to access the files on the NAS drive from a Windows PC.

Not very familiar with this website yet, Do I need to close this question. Am not pursuing any of the 2 answers for reasons explained.

Mike Berryman

Posted 2013-10-02T15:57:54.860

Reputation: 29

It might be easier to set up sharing from the old Mac to a new one running OS X, and then transfer that to the final destination. – martineau – 2013-10-02T17:46:20.530

Are there other file sharing protocols available on the NAS other than Windows/AFP? You'd be much better off using that than the NAS => Mac => Windows box. The NAS may support FTP, SCP, or NFS. Cygwin may help on the Windows side. Also check Web Sharing from this doc

– Rich Homolka – 2013-10-03T03:41:13.457

@martineau: Macs are fairly scarse in South Africa, and there are none in our organization. The one I'm using was used by a visiting modeling sceintist who left it behind when she left several years ago. A colleague has a recent private Apple laptop but is reluctant to bring it in for me to use. – Mike Berryman – 2013-10-03T18:20:38.820

@Rich Homolka: The NAS has Windows, FTP, Linux, AppleTalk protocols. The only ones I can enable are Linux and AppleTalk. I created a bootable Linux CD but could not get it to see the NAS. It was the first time I used Linux and I didn't know enough to fiddle further. I could see the NAS and it's root folders from the MAC using Net Browser, and I'm slowly copying the files while I explore other methods. It will take about 7-10 days at 15-20 hrs per day because the tranfer is so slow and the MAC sometimes hangs overnight. I will read the doc you referred to. Thanks. – Mike Berryman – 2013-10-03T18:37:42.833

One idea I don't think anyone's mentioned yet would be to physically remove the hard disk from the Mac and install it into your PC and then install a driver that will let you read Mac OS formatted disk. I did something similar years ago in order to be able to read the contents of a Mac external HD on my Windows box. – martineau – 2013-10-03T18:39:26.673

@martineau: Thanks that sounds interesting. One problem with that approach is that the internal HD shows only 16Gb free and the amount of data to transfer from the NAS is about 280Gb. Also the copy speed from NAS to internal HD doesn't seem to be much (if any) faster than copying from NAS to the USB drive. I supect this is because the MAC ethernet might be slooow 10 and not 100. If that is the case then even getting filesharing to work might not help as the ethernet speed would limit copy speed to about the same as now (NAS to USB). – Mike Berryman – 2013-10-03T19:11:49.740

Re fastest solutions, part 1.

If the disk is formatted with the Apple partition map then a PC running windows will not recognize it without additional drivers. By default it only recognises MBR (on windows XP) or MBR and GPT on a modern windows.

Linux seems to have some support for that as does FreeBSD.

– Hennes – 2013-10-03T20:06:39.667

Re fastest solutions, part 2.

Next you need to recognise the filesystem on the disk. If that is proprietary then you are out of luck. However if might be HFS or HFS+

A quick search shows that there is software for this. For windows I found this UNTESTED link. Linux and FreeBSD have native support for it.

– Hennes – 2013-10-03T20:08:27.363

Re USB speeds: 1) USB v1's speed is about 40 gigabyte per weekend. That is 40 GB (capital B) or 240gigabit.

Note the important difference between the regular b and the capital B. It is a factor 8).

USB v2's seems to average at 30-35MB/sec. That is about 7 gigabyte per hour. – Hennes – 2013-10-03T20:11:50.570

Thanks for the information but I'm abandoning the Mac to PC transfer and posted again for accessing the NSA drive directly on a PC. Re the actual transfer speed from NAS to Mac USB drive this morning it took 25 minutes to copy 1 Gb of files! I'lll just keep going ahead with that while looking at the above alternative. (unless I can borrow a OS X Mac). – Mike Berryman – 2013-10-03T20:44:19.043

Your comments made me think again. Since the NAS uses Linux presumably the disk is formatted with a Linux partition/format? Maybe I must try my Linux CD again in the OC with the NAS HD in a external USB enclosure and see if it can read it! – Mike Berryman – 2013-10-03T20:56:05.063

Answers

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With appropriate software, FTP is probably your best bet. But if you've "never even seen" a Mac before this, that's going to be a bit of a challenge. Finding OS9 ftp software in 2013 is also a bit of a challenge. You could hope you are lucky and there is some already on the Mac...

Tucows - this one is freeware does list a couple of versions supporting classic (Macspeak for Pre-OSX systems).

This one is shareware. Here is another freeware.

Fetch is a good one but not free, and I don't know if they can get you a version that works on OS9 easily now (they certainly made them then, but I doubt that what's presently downloaded runs on OS9, and I'm not seeing a link to old versions.)

An ftp:// url might work, but if it does, you can run an FTP client on a PC, too. But you're after the from mac to PC direction which puts you at needing a Mac FTP client that will "put" files (one of the above), or an ftp server running on the Mac (possibly also one of the above) from which you can "get" files on the PC (unless the NAS does ftp itself, in which case, no Mac needed and you'd be happy.)

smb definitely won't work on OS9.

Ecnerwal

Posted 2013-10-02T15:57:54.860

Reputation: 5 046

Thank you for your good suggestions but please refer to my comments to the 1st answer and my qurestion edit. Looking at alternative not involving any transfer of data from Apple to PC. Posted new question. – Mike Berryman – 2013-10-03T20:37:46.413

For anyone interested further see my new question: "Does anyone have experience recovering the files from a Promise NS4300 server disk?". – Mike Berryman – 2013-10-05T07:18:07.560

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You have a number of options:

  1. Web Sharing --Windows-based computers can connect to your Macintosh via Web browsers (HTTP) when you have turned on the Web Sharing feature in the Web Sharing control panel. Any computer, not just those using Windows or Mac OS, that can make a standard HTTP connection should be able to get files from your computer via Web Sharing.

  2. Connect from Mac OS to a Microsoft Windows server product via AFP You can add AfP to Windows 7 with a 3rd-party product, i.e. http://www.grouplogic.com/enterprise-file-sharing/mac-windows-file-sharing/features/sys-reqs/

  3. Connect from Mac OS to non-server Microsoft Windows products via SMB Add SMB as you mentioned. Some examples of software that allow this are Dave by Thursby software, MochaSofts' Mocha SMB, or DoubleTalk by Connectix.

  4. Connect from Windows to non-server Apple products via AFP You can install software on the Windows-based computer that allows it to connect to AFP services. Some examples include Miramar's PC Mac LAN and Thursby's TSTalk.

Debra

Posted 2013-10-02T15:57:54.860

Reputation: 4 000

Thanks! These are good suggestions but I've realised that the copy speed limitation is getting the data from the NAS to the MAC. In other words it is slow whether I copy from the NAS to the external USB drive or the internal drive. Since I am currently getting the data (slowly) onto the USB which is easily moved to the PC there doesn't seem any point now in looking at ways to move the data from the Mac to the PC. I'm now looking at ways of reading the NAS HD directly on a PC (posted new question). – Mike Berryman – 2013-10-03T20:35:02.713

Sorry here is the new question I posted: "Does anyone have experience recovering the files from a Promise NS4300 server disk?" – Mike Berryman – 2013-10-06T06:39:55.460

Asked: 2013-10-02T15:57:54.860

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