External hard drive file naming

[frani2001]

Really hope some one can offer some advice here. We use a Linux Silicon server which has always served us well for our web server, jobs in progress, jobs backup and our MIS system. It is 700GB in size and uses a 5 disc raid system. I have almost filled its capacity and rather than forking out thousands to upgrade this to more capacity I decided it would be better (financially) to archive any work older than 2 years to an external hard drive. After searching the web and discussions with our local supplier I decided to opt for the Western Digital 500GB.

My problem is that Mac OSX and r linux server accept almost any file naming convention ie including "/" (slash marks) and long file names etc but this new drive doesn't and fails every time i try to copy files to it. I spoke to our supplier but he said that all external drives do this, is this correct and if so what should I do? I have thousands and thousands of files not to mention other reasonsd I dont want to rename all the files,

Any advice appreciated, cheers

[beermonster]

not entirely sure but this may help

http://www.cyansoftware.com/MacServerIP.htm

we use it - works a dream for us, but I.T. installed it and thats about all i know

that and it was on here that someone told me about it - solved our naming issues

good luck

[frani2001]

Thanks Beermonster I'll have a look at that, it looks usefull.

It wasn't the simpler solution to my problem though. I posted on mac OSX forums as well and was instructed to check the file format the drive had been formatted in - this was "Macintosh - PC (MS-DOS)". I re-formatted it using Disc Utilty and set the file format to Mac OS X Extended . I can now copy any file name that works on my mac to my external drive.