Pages: [1]   Go Down

Author Topic: How to access my images on Mac internal hard drives from a PC?  (Read 5641 times)

dgberg

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2753
    • http://bergsprintstudio.com http://bergscustomfurniture.com
How to access my images on Mac internal hard drives from a PC?
« on: September 04, 2013, 05:37:46 am »

My main system is a Mac Pro running 10.6.8 with CS6 and Lightroom 4.
A new printer I am setting up is an Epson 4880 printing Sawgrass dye sublimation IQ inks which requires a PC driver.
In another thread the discussion of VMware or parallels instead of buying a PC was discussed.
Before I go out and spend any additional money I need to see if their is a better way to do all of this.
All processing will still be done on the Mac but the images need to get to the PC for printing and then I want to print from Lightroom. Is there any way to access the hard drives between the two systems to make the flow easier. (4 internal drives on the MAC + 1 external)
I suppose I will have to set up Lightroom on the PC if I want to print from Lightroom.
I cannot tell you how upset I am that this system is not supported by Apple.
I feel like I am regressing 30 years

jjj

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 4728
    • http://www.futtfuttfuttphotography.com
Re: How to access my images on Mac internal hard drives from a PC?
« Reply #1 on: September 04, 2013, 06:03:40 am »

Just view your Mac in Windows Explorer [PC equivalent of Finder] via the network and you should see all your files no problem - as long as you've shared your drives.
LR doesn't work over networks BTW.

But surely using Parallels or VMWare would be easier and cheaper than buying a PC.
Logged
Tradition is the Backbone of the Spinele

Manoli

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2296
Re: How to access my images on Mac internal hard drives from a PC?
« Reply #2 on: September 04, 2013, 06:41:15 am »

Several points here, Dan.

(1) You don't necessarily need a PC.   An old Mac, Mini, MacBook, iMac, providing it runs OS X 10.8 ( perhaps also 10.7/ 10.6) can be set to run Windows automatically. Download the BootCamp drivers (and instructions) from Apple, install OS X and then Windows. The Mac can then be set to boot straight into Windows thereby turning it into a hybrid PC.

(2) Both Mac and Windows can READ but not write HFS/NTFS files. To do so, (though not absolutely necessary, strongly recommended), you'll need a file system driver such as Paragon. Paragon HFS for Windows  provides full read-write access to HFS /HFSX partitions on any type of disks (GPT, MBR) under most Windows versions.

https://www.paragon-software.com/home/hfs-windows/

I suppose I will have to set up Lightroom on the PC if I want to print from Lightroom.

Yes, you will.

LR doesn't work over networks BTW.

LR reads any MOUNTED volume., which should also include any shared disks or network mounted disk arrays.

--

Parallels, is better than VMWare BUT these are big,big, complicated solutions that litter your disk with an untold number of programs all in the name of interoperability.Though much improved they're is still a big performance hit. I'm not even sure that your Sawgrass drivers will work under so many layers of translation. Too many variables should you be unable to print- (is it the driver, Parallels or the OS, either Win or OS X). God help you if something goes wrong. You will most definitely need first-hand confirmation that they do. Above all, in your case, don't think it's even necessary.

ps The other option, of course , is to set up a BootCamp partition on your current Mac. But then you'll have to logout and login to Windows each time you want to print. The round trip soon becomes irritating unless you do it only occasionally.

ps#2 If you decide on a second 'box' you may wish to look into some 'free' screen sharing options as well, such as Splashtop and TeamViewer which both allow you to see the screen and operate remotely. Splashtop also from an iPad.
« Last Edit: September 04, 2013, 07:11:16 am by Manoli »
Logged

dgberg

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2753
    • http://bergsprintstudio.com http://bergscustomfurniture.com
Re: How to access my images on Mac internal hard drives from a PC?
« Reply #3 on: September 04, 2013, 08:58:22 am »

After hearing all this I do not know what to think.
I can tell you that Sawgrass has told me they do not support their driver on parallels or Vmware.(Red flag!)

Maybe the easiest solution is a used pc laptop with Lightroom 4 or 5 installed.
Duplicate my Lightroom photos from my Mac internal drive  to an external drive (I have a 2 TB external.)
Plug it into the Mac to update the picture folder and when printing from the Pc unplug the drive and plug into the Pc to acess all images and print on the Pc.
Wow what a mess and here I thought hardly anyone in this business still uses a Pc. ???
« Last Edit: September 04, 2013, 09:00:17 am by Dan Berg »
Logged

jjj

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 4728
    • http://www.futtfuttfuttphotography.com
Re: How to access my images on Mac internal hard drives from a PC?
« Reply #4 on: September 04, 2013, 09:22:36 am »

If Parallels and VMWare are no go, then use Windows in Boot camp on your Mac. That is a good way to get best of both worlds.

Uh I think you'll find a lot of people use PCs in the creative industries. Apple are a phone company now, so that percentage may well increase over time. I'm particularly underwhelmed by their very late to the game Mac Pro, which seems to be a souped up Mac Mini with no room for the 6 drives that currently reside in my current MacPro. I dread to think how much getting a new one plus all the external HD enclosures with hard to find new connections will be. Particularly as not being able to upgrade at a later date seems to be the new Apple way, currently you have to buy a maxed out machine upfront rather than buying much, much cheaper HDs/memory from say Samsung/Crucial. Which can be done when you can afford it or because you only need it when software 3 years later gets more power hungry. Doubling memory in the current MacBook Pro is 4 x the price I paid to double memory in my user upgradable MBP.  :( [/digression]
Logged
Tradition is the Backbone of the Spinele

dgberg

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2753
    • http://bergsprintstudio.com http://bergscustomfurniture.com
Re: How to access my images on Mac internal hard drives from a PC?
« Reply #5 on: September 04, 2013, 10:07:41 am »

If Parallels and VMWare are no go, then use Windows in Boot camp on your Mac. That is a good way to get best of both worlds.

Uh I think you'll find a lot of people use PCs in the creative industries. Apple are a phone company now, so that percentage may well increase over time. I'm particularly underwhelmed by their very late to the game Mac Pro, which seems to be a souped up Mac Mini with no room for the 6 drives that currently reside in my current MacPro. I dread to think how much getting a new one plus all the external HD enclosures with hard to find new connections will be. Particularly as not being able to upgrade at a later date seems to be the new Apple way, currently you have to buy a maxed out machine upfront rather than buying much, much cheaper HDs/memory from say Samsung/Crucial. Which can be done when you can afford it or because you only need it when software 3 years later gets more power hungry. Doubling memory in the current MacBook Pro is 4 x the price I paid to double memory in my user upgradable MBP.  :( [/digression]

Just a frustrated comment by me. Yes they both have their ups and downs.
I am still on Mac 10.6.8 because it runs everything I have really well, except no Lightroom 5 which takes 10.7 or higher.

jjj

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 4728
    • http://www.futtfuttfuttphotography.com
Re: How to access my images on Mac internal hard drives from a PC?
« Reply #6 on: September 04, 2013, 10:55:09 am »

I wish I could say my MP runs really well. :(
I'm on 10.8.4 and not sure moving on from 10.6.8 was entirely a good idea. I think it was something a software upgrade needing me to move on.
Logged
Tradition is the Backbone of the Spinele

Manoli

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2296
Re: How to access my images on Mac internal hard drives from a PC?
« Reply #7 on: September 04, 2013, 12:01:28 pm »

You have a Mac - yes?
You need a copy of Win7
Install boot camp -

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3986
Logged

dgberg

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2753
    • http://bergsprintstudio.com http://bergscustomfurniture.com
Re: How to access my images on Mac internal hard drives from a PC?
« Reply #8 on: September 04, 2013, 01:25:36 pm »

Thanks to all.

The Sawgrass driver only is supported on Windows XP and Vista.
Windows 7 and vista,the same or different?

Manoli

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2296
Re: How to access my images on Mac internal hard drives from a PC?
« Reply #9 on: September 04, 2013, 01:48:52 pm »

Dan , you've got me on that one.

I think BootCamp (10.6) supports Vista, possibly XP too. You'll need to check on the Apple support site for info. What I would add, is that given that you're going back to now unsupported editions of Windows (certainly XP, not sure about Vista), you'll probably be better off relying on Apple for support (ironically !)

But also worth checking,if I remember correctly, Windows7 has an XP/Vista compatibility mode.
Logged

xocet

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 41
Re: How to access my images on Mac internal hard drives from a PC?
« Reply #10 on: September 04, 2013, 04:05:45 pm »

Just to further add to your misery, XP will soon been unsupported by MS (April 2014), and Vista's not got long to live either.  The Sawgrass bods really need to update their software to run under Windows 7 at a minimum, or better still, write a Mac driver  :)

Many vendors, even with enterprise software, still say their products are unsupported on virtual environments (whether Fusion/Parallels/VMware Workstation, or data centre type virtualisation like vSphere/Hyper-V/KVM).  In reality, most programs, unless they require direct access to specific hardware, work without issue.

If you are not that technical, why not get a relatively cheap PC or laptop, and hook that up.  You don't need fantastic performance, just enough memory to run LR, as you are only printing through it.  On the Mac, setup Windows file sharing, and the PC can then connect and read the data over the network.

Logged

John.Murray

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 886
    • Images by Murray
Re: How to access my images on Mac internal hard drives from a PC?
« Reply #11 on: September 05, 2013, 12:55:35 am »

If you have a pc laying around (either XP or Vista) just load up your printer driver.  Now add a file share to XP.  The absolute easiest thing to share on a Windows box is the "public documents" folder, network and filesystem permissions are already set by default for you - just run the XP networking wizard.... be sure to share it with "everyone".  Vista is a little more complicated; you need to turn on 40bit (LANMan) network security and set your network type to "work".  Vista by default will select a network type of "home" with 128bit security (security in this context is how windows handles SMB password encryption across the wire").  Mac's are easily capable of mounting network smb shares:

On your mac - open up finder and type cmd+k.  in the dialog type smb://[hostname of your windows box].  You will immediately see all shares on that PC.  If you prefer you can add it the the list along the left panel in finder.....

From LR just export TIFF to the Windows share....  Then print from Windows using PS ( I didn't see LR as an approved app on the Sawgrass site)

Finally, although XP *is* going out of support, you can greatly reduce the risk by simply disabling internet access on or before April 8th 2014.  An easy way to do it is to type in 127.0.0.1 for DNS, in Control Panel Network, TCPIP.  I personally have an older Dell XP box, 2GB RAM acting as a printer server for an HP4600 Color Laserjet, and also hosting a Microtek ArtixScan 120tf, running Silverfast......

Final tip:  Install iTunes on the PC (ughhh) then *immediately* uninstall it, along with Apple Device Support - leaving just Bonjour installed; this is basically Apple's version of network discovery, it will make your Windows box a little more responsive to queries from Apple devices......

Lastly:  If you don't want to mess with another machine (you are connecting your printer using ethernet right?), install a copy of Oracle's Virtual Box on your Mac and install XP on that.  You can probably get by with 512MB allocated memory.  Networking VM's can be a little tricky, if you decide to go that route contact me.....
« Last Edit: September 05, 2013, 01:50:53 am by John.Murray »
Logged

dgberg

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2753
    • http://bergsprintstudio.com http://bergscustomfurniture.com
Re: How to access my images on Mac internal hard drives from a PC?
« Reply #12 on: September 08, 2013, 03:01:22 am »

Thanks again for all the help. Think the Virtual Box may be the way to go.

So bummed! Sitting here looking at all this money I spent and would like to throw it all away and start over.
I wish I had purchased the new Epson 9890. Would have been 3 or 4 times the money but if I end up having to buy a PC just to run this 4880 that's more money down the drain.
No long range plans to get in bed with Sawgrass especially with IQ inks costing over $1.00 a ml.
(JTek inks are .16 ml.)
They want a premium times 6 for their inks but little to no support,just wonderful.

« Last Edit: September 08, 2013, 03:05:51 am by Dan Berg »
Logged

degrub

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1947
Re: How to access my images on Mac internal hard drives from a PC?
« Reply #13 on: September 08, 2013, 12:33:25 pm »

John,

You can download and install Bonjour directly - just google Bonjour windows

Dan,

Find a friend with Win 7 pro and install the drivers for the printer and see if it will work either directly or under "xp mode". Create a restore point before you install.

If you end up going the xp route, make sure you get the latest service packs downloaded as well as the more recent updates and store them on backed up disks in case you have to re-installl.

Frank
« Last Edit: September 08, 2013, 12:55:45 pm by degrub »
Logged
Pages: [1]   Go Up