File System Collision - Potential Issues?

[BestPCBuilder2017]

So anyone with file system experience or has good knowledge of them, I could use your help on this one if you are available/up for it. 

 

Okay, so I found a way to save images of USB drives as ISO files that can be loaded back onto USBs as the images they were saved as. Most of my main storage is on the NTFS file system and there are ISO image files that were saved with the OS X Extended, Journaled file system. 

 

Would there be any issue/issues storing the images that were saved with the OS X Extended, Journaled file system on an NTFS file system rather than something like an OS X Extended, Journaled or Ext3 file system? 

[BestPCBuilder2017]

@GoodBytes I'm hoping you or maybe someone you might know could be of help on this one. If you're not available, I understand. 

[DrMacintosh]

MacOS can only read NTFS out of the box 

[BestPCBuilder2017]

3 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

MacOS can only read NTFS out of the box 

How does your statement apply to this situation exactly? 

[DrMacintosh]

8 minutes ago, NCIX Lampy said:

Would there be any issue/issues storing the images that were saved with the OS X Extended, Journaled file system on an NTFS file system rather than something like an OS X Extended, Journaled or Ext3 file system? 

The Mac would not be able to write to the NTFS drive. 

[GoodBytes]

8 minutes ago, NCIX Lampy said:

@GoodBytes I'm hoping you or maybe someone you might know could be of help on this one. If you're not available, I understand. 

No idea. Sorry.

[BestPCBuilder2017]

3 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

The Mac would not be able to write to the NTFS drive. 

Again, how does that apply? 

[kirashi]

10 minutes ago, NCIX Lampy said:

So anyone with file system experience or has good knowledge of them, I could use your help on this one if you are available/up for it. 

 

Okay, so I found a way to save images of USB drives as ISO files that can be loaded back onto USBs as the images they were saved as. Most of my main storage is on the NTFS file system and there are ISO image files that were saved with the OS X Extended, Journaled file system. 

 

Would there be any issue/issues storing the images that were saved with the OS X Extended, Journaled file system on an NTFS file system rather than something like an OS X Extended, Journaled or Ext3 file system? 

I believe you're asking about storing a USB drive IMG/ISO on a computers' filesystem - as in, you want to store a USB Drive IMG on an NTFS, EXT4, or HFS+ formatted hard drive, yeah?

 

If so, there shouldn't be any difference in storing a Disk IMG file on ANY file system any more so than there would be storing other files on it. This is because a Disk IMG should literally just be a bit-for-bit clone of the Disk you are imaging, stored as a standard IMG file. It should store the same across different filesystems, so long as the filesystems support the file size of Disk IMG file being created.

 

This means you can make a Disc IMG of an OSX installation DVD (that is HFS+) on a Mac computer and copy it over to an NTFS formatted Windows Hard Drive, from which it can then be burned back to DVD using something like IMGBurn, even though Windows itself cannot read the IMG file.

[BestPCBuilder2017]

3 hours ago, kirashi said:

I believe you're asking about storing a USB drive IMG/ISO on a computers' filesystem - as in, you want to store a USB Drive IMG on an NTFS, EXT4, or HFS+ formatted hard drive, yeah?

 

If so, there shouldn't be any difference in storing a Disk IMG file on ANY file system any more so than there would be storing other files on it. This is because a Disk IMG should literally just be a bit-for-bit clone of the Disk you are imaging, and should store the same across different filesystems, so long as the filesystems support the file size of Disk IMG. This means you can make a Disc IMG of an OSX installation DVD (that is HFS+) and copy it over to an NTFS formatted Windows Hard Drive, from which it can then be burned back to DVD using something like IMGBurn.

There wouldn't be any collision issues? 

[DrMacintosh]

14 minutes ago, NCIX Lampy said:

Would there be any issue/issues storing the images that were saved with the OS X Extended, Journaled file system on an NTFS file system

Oh ok, I wasnt paying attention when I was reading this. 

 

You want to know if there will be any issues saving an image of a drive thats formating in MacOS Extended Journaled. Right? 

[BestPCBuilder2017]

3 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

YOu want to know if there will be any issues saving an image of a drive thats formating in MacOS Extended Journaled. The short answer is yes because NTFS wont play nice with HFS 

Okay, how, and what issues would occur? 

[kirashi]

1 minute ago, NCIX Lampy said:

There wouldn't be any collision issues? 

If you're referring to file naming or attribute collision, such as how OSX HFS+ supports slashes in file and folder names (for the love of GOD WHY), then no, there should not be collision issues because as far as Windows is concerned your IMG file is essentially just a bunch of 10101011001's on disk.

 

However, please know that in order to create the IMG of whatever Disk you have, the OS doing the imaging usually does need to be able to fully read and understand the filesystem. (There is some software out there that will successfully image drives you can't read on Windows, allowing you to make an image of an HFS+ formatted drive from a Windows system, but I haven't found any freely available programs that are reliable.)

[DrMacintosh]

6 minutes ago, NCIX Lampy said:

Okay, how, and what issues would occur? 

I just checked, anything made with MacOS Extended Journaled will not work with an NTFS formated drive. So a MacOS created ISO or Image would not be transferable or readable to an NTFS drive. 

[BestPCBuilder2017]

3 hours ago, kirashi said:

If you're referring to file naming or attribute collision, such as how OSX HFS+ supports slashes in file and folder names (for the love of GOD WHY), then no, there should not be collision issues because as far as Windows is concerned your IMG file is essentially just a bunch of 10101011001's on disk.

Interesting. I figured because even though it's a bunch of 1's and 0's, the format or order of the 1's and 0's would still be saved as the OS X Extended Journaled file system which would look like a file system inside of a file system and then from that cause issues. 

Quote

However, please know that in order to create the IMG of whatever Disk you have, the OS doing the imaging usually does need to be able to fully read and understand the filesystem. 

Interesting. 

Quote

(There is some software out there that will successfully image drives you can't read on Windows, allowing you to make an image of an HFS+ formatted drive from a Windows system, but I haven't found any freely available programs that are reliable.)

I use Rufus and a Mac app called ApplePi-Baker. 

[BestPCBuilder2017]

3 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

I just checked, anything made with MacOS Extended Journaled will not work with an NTFS formated drive. So a MacOS created ISO or Image would not be transferable or readable to an NTFS drive. 

Really? 

[DrMacintosh]

Just now, NCIX Lampy said:

Really? 

I tried on my MacBook. Made a drive and formated it as MacOS Extended Journaled and you cant use it on an NTFS drive. Made the same drive formated as NTFS and you can only read data from it, not write. 

[BestPCBuilder2017]

3 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

I tried on my MacBook. Made a drive and formated it as MacOS Extended Journaled and you cant use it on an NTFS drive. Made the same drive formated as NTFS and you can only read data from it, not write. 

I really don't get why you're commenting at this point if you don't get what I'm talking about. 

[kirashi]

5 minutes ago, NCIX Lampy said:

Interesting. I figured because even though it's a bunch of 1's and 0's, the format or order of the 1's and 0's would still be saved as the OS X Extended Journaled file system which would look like a file system inside of a file system and

Right, but unless Windows can actually read the file, it just assumes it's a bunch of 10101011's and leaves it as it was stored. It's similar to how you can import Sony RAW files from a Sony camera without their software installed - you just can't open the files, but they are indeed stored on your computer.

 

3 minutes ago, NCIX Lampy said:

Really? 

Can you mount it though? If you can't mount it, then it's not readable as @DrMacintosh stated. Windows knows it's a file that takes up XYZ space on disk, but won't be able to mount or open it without some sort of 3rd party driver software installed. Seeing a file on disk != being able to read said file. I create OSX install DVD's occasionally for... testing purposes ahem. Windows can see the DVD when it's inserted into my DVD drive, and knows it takes up XYZ space, but it cannot open the DVD because it doesn't understand HFS+.

[DrMacintosh]

1 minute ago, NCIX Lampy said:

I really don't get why you're commenting at this point if you don't get what I'm talking about. 

Ok fine figure it out yourself. 

[BestPCBuilder2017]

3 hours ago, kirashi said:

Right, but unless Windows can actually read the file, it just assumes it's a bunch of 10101011's and leaves it as it was stored. It's similar to how you can import Sony RAW files from a Sony camera without their software installed - you just can't open the files, but they are indeed stored on your computer.

 

3 hours ago, kirashi said:

Can you mount it though? If you can't mount it, then it's not readable as @DrMacintosh stated. Windows knows it's a file that takes up XYZ space on disk, but won't be able to mount or open it without some sort of 3rd party driver software installed. Seeing a file on disk != being able to read said file.

Mount it, I don't know and haven't tried it. However, when I load the ISO to a USB using Rufus, it seems to work fine. I haven't experienced any issues that I'm aware of, which is why I figure I should double check by asking to be sure. 

[BestPCBuilder2017]

3 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

Ok fine figure it out yourself. 

Or I could just use the help of people who understand what I'm talking about, rather than having people comment without asking the proper questions if they don't know and continue to comment anyway/regardless. 

 

Might I suggest for future reference that you think before you post a little bit and/or ask questions if you don't understand the situation at hand? 

[kirashi]

1 minute ago, NCIX Lampy said:

Mount it, I don't know and haven't tried it. However, when I load the ISO to a USB using Rufus, it seems to work fine. I haven't experienced any issues that I'm aware of, which is why I figure I should double check by asking to be sure. 

Good that you're checking - Rufus is one of the few free Disk imaging tools that works decently with most disk images, including ones that Windows can't read.

[DrMacintosh]

1 minute ago, NCIX Lampy said:

Might I suggest for future reference that you think before you post a little bit and/or ask questions if you don't understand the situation at hand? 

no

[BestPCBuilder2017]

3 hours ago, kirashi said:

Good that you're checking - Rufus is one of the few free Disk imaging tools that works decently with most disk images, including ones that Windows can't read.

I'm figuring it's able to work as to what seems fine as far as I can tell because it's stored in the correct container (IMG or ISO file type) that Windows can understand even if it's the case being another file system. If I'm wrong, feel free to correct me, but that's just what I figure/make of it. 

[kirashi]

2 hours ago, NCIX Lampy said:

I'm figuring it's able to work as to what seems fine as far as I can tell because it's stored in the correct container (IMG or ISO file type) that Windows can understand even if it's the case being another file system. If I'm wrong, feel free to correct me, but that's just what I figure/make of it. 

It's not that Windows understands it - Windows just knows that files ending in .ISO and .IMG are usually Disk Image files. You could rename a JPG picture to .ISO and Windows would claim it is now a Disk Image file, but would flip shit if you tried to mount it using Explorer because it is most obviously still a JPG picture.

 

Windows isn't as smart as OSX in checking file headers to know what program to open them with - it relies on the file extension. On the iMac PC's at work people like to save files without extensions a lot because they don't know what they're doing. However, MacOS still opens these files in Word 2016 just fine because it actually looks at the file headers, and not just the now-missing file extension.