Re: Converting Macintosh Files

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance

Some additional notes:

1) William is correct - Apple's use of SMB does not recognize the defacto
standard method of storing resource forks the way Microsoft, Thursby,
ExtremeZ do. If you have a lot of data in the original Microsoft SFM
format, you are probably better off using a third party solution.

2) That said, I would bet that your problem is related to file names as much
as resource forks. William is correct again that the streams used in
Macintosh files are not any different that ones used by Microsoft Office.
It should not matter to Data Protection Manager, but it might. File names
with characters that Mac users love (like slashes, bullets) often drive
Windows software nuts. Even with a third party product, you may continue to
have problems with existing products, because these products don't rename
files that already exist. You might benefit from using a program that will
scan your file system and rename files that have funny characters in them.

3) If you get an evaluation of DAVE, Thursby's support department should be
able to help you identify and correct problems with Data Protection Manager.

Paul Nelson
Thursby Software Systems, Inc.

in article mecklists-C2DF92.22513701032006@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, William
Smith at mecklists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote on 3/1/06 10:51 PM:

In article <#pcjpsOPGHA.2176@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Lisa Parris" <lisa@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi William,

Part of our Disaster Recovery plan depends on Microsoft's Data Protection
Manager which is basically a product that replicates files and changes to
files over the network on a nearly continuous basis. The only data we're
having trouble with is the Macintosh data that's stored on the one server
that's running SFM.

Microsoft says that the Macintosh data may contain "alternate streams" which
could be causing a problem. Not to sound like an idiot but I don't know
exactly what that means (is that related to forks?). We're having problems
with really long filenames and filenames that have unsupported characters
among other things. If I'm understanding correctly, which I'm probably not,
you're saying that for each Macintosh file on the network, there's a hidden
(or not hidden) file "._filename" which corresponds to it?

Thanks for the reply and any additional help you can give me!

Hi Lisa!

I'm completely unfamiliar with Microsoft's Data Protection Manager but
it does have a newsgroup where you may want to ask about Mac files
microsoft.public.dataprotectionmanager.

Although Mac files do use alternate streams to store the resource fork
information as Rod points out in his response to you, I find it
difficult to believe that they aren't supported. Macs aren't the only
users of multiple streams. It's hardly data protection if it doesn't
protect all data.

The AFP version on Windows server is 2.2, which doesn't support file
names longer than 31 characters. The ExtremeZ-IP server software uses
AFP 3.2, which not only supports the 254 character maximum but also
supports Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) Access Control Lists (ACLs).

You're correct that for every file your Macs place on the server when
connected via SMB that there will be an additional "._" file. Depending
on your Windows settings, hidden files may be set to be shown and these
files will propagate to the top of the file list because of their names.
These files don't exist when Macs connect via AFP, but instead that
information gets put into the alternate data stream.

Hope this helps! bill


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Word 2008 - does it do right-to-left text
    ... the same thing for Mac Office, they could expect to improve Office sales by ... "Take Windows Office 2007, remove the products that are too hard, remove the ... If Apple RTL support is now sufficiently complete that Microsoft can ...
    (microsoft.public.mac.office.word)
  • Re: Word 2008 - does it do right-to-left text
    ... However Microsoft keep boasting they are the biggest Mac developer team ... outside Apple and yet they cannot manage to do what much MUCH ... As I pointed out NeoOffice already can do r-t-l on a Mac ... We already know we are going to loose VBA support (which even though we are ...
    (microsoft.public.mac.office.word)
  • Re: Spoilered for talk of religion
    ... Microsoft couldn't write an operating system, ... It was a bit like MS-DOS in that it was `the standard OS such as ... Apple came out with the Mac (using a modern CPU rather than the backward ...
    (uk.people.support.depression)
  • Re: 2004 Microsoft Word for Mac versus 11.03 Word for PC
    ... Microsoft Word 2003 Build 11.8026.8036 SP 2. ... Word 2004 on the Mac appears in Word>About Word as Version 11.3 build ... Microsoft provides fonts ... unlikely to welcome or be able to use JPG or TIFF. ...
    (microsoft.public.mac.office.word)
  • MS pays Apple $$$ millions in hush money [Long]
    ... has to do with them using stolen Apple code. ... violations, patent infringement, and stolen code. ... the ongoing rivalry between Apple and Microsoft ... a five year deal for continued development of Office for the Mac ...
    (comp.sys.mac.advocacy)