I bought a G drive to back up my Mac... can I also use it

Your G drive is likely formatted as HFS+. Unfortunately, Windows does not natively support HFS+.

Thanks, DD, I knew you'd know. Damn.

If you share the drive onto the network through your Mac, and mount it onto the windows machine, then you will be able to copy files to it.

If that's all you want to do then you can use it to "back up" files simply by copying them across the network.

Is that what you are trying to do?

We don't have a network. I just want him to be able to back up his files, but I called Apple and they said all their hard drives are formatted for Macs, so I will have to buy him his own.

Thanks for your help, though.

Now, this is an answer to a different question, but see if it works. I back my accounting program up to E drive, which is the CD drive on my PC. Maybe it's a caveman technique, but it works and I wouldn't know what to do with an external hard drive, anyhow.

This is the manual, which suggests that it is possible to set up a G drive on a PC by formatting the drive to "FAT32"
http://g-technology.com/Support/Pdf/G-DRIVE-Q-Manual-12-07.

Or you can spend some bucks to buy a software called Paragon HFS+ which will allow you to read-write HFS+ drive partitions on windows.

The Apple Tech said we could reformat the hard drive but that it would only save files 4Gigs or less. I think it's just easier to buy him his own, especially since my MAC broke down when I tried to install a later MAC OS. I was without it for 24 hours while they tried to recover files, etc. Don't want to screw anything else up.

You don't have a network? How are you connecting to the Internet? I haven't seen a machine NOT connected to a network in ages. I don't even know what you would do with disconnected machine

No, sorry, I thought you meant 'are we networked?' as in, the two computers on a network... of course we're connected

I may be a bit confused, but here's my point.

If both machines are able to connect to the Internet, then they are on "a network" and can copy files between them through that network.

You should be able to "Share" your G: drive (which I'm assuming is on your MAC) and the Windows machine should be able to "Map" to that drive and then copy files to/from it.

If this is the case, then I'm sure we can help you "map" the drives (if you are interested).

I don't know how we can share files. We are not networked; we are on WIFI. Does that make it clearer?

It's clear you do not have a local network, but are connected independently to the internet.

ETA: That's my understanding, anyway.

We're connected through WIFI, yes, not a LAN. Who's connected through LAN at home anyway?? Thought that was for workplaces.

WIFI is a network. It's just a wireless network.

You probably have a wireless router plugged into a cable modem or something (common home configuration). Your machines probably all have the same IP Netmask and are probably all on the same "network".

If you turn on File Sharing on your MAC and then browse the Network on your Windows machine you may see the MAC Folder. It depends on if the machines can discover each other. You can also Map drives by IP address if the browsing functions are not working, but that would take a bit of explaining to help you through.

I'm guessing about a lot of your configurations, but if I'm close to right then this might help: