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   Software Review
   MacDrive 6
 
   Publisher: Mediafour
   Genre: Mac to PC conversion software
   Platform: Windows

   Cost: $49.99

   Website: http://www.mediafour.com
   Download Demo : Click Here
   Release Dates: December 1, 2005

   Review Date: September 15, 2006

   Reviewed By: Jeremy Hanke



Final Score:
9.5

I've recently been working on a project for an upcoming issue of the magazine to create hot-swappable hard drives for media production that could be swapped between PC and Mac. Of course, I quickly discovered that, although Mac will read PC drives, they won't write to the NTFS standard that is currently used by PC hard drives. PCs, on the other hand, won't even try to read a Mac drive and will just ignore it or try to re-format it. (Oddly enough, I have two cats at home that behave very similarly to one another, but that's a story for another time and a far different article!)

At first I thought the smart money was on converting the Mac to write to PC disks, but I quickly discovered that was a no-go. Luckily for me, the good folks at Mediafour went about the process from the opposite angle and had complete success. They made a program that allowed your PC to read any Mac disc and write to it appropriately. When I heard about this clever device, I knew that I needed to do a review of it for my fellow microfilmmakers, who might easily desire an easy way to shuttle information back and forth between Mac and PC, much as I did.

With that said, let's break this little program down and see how it faired.

Ease of Use
I don't think I've run into a software package that is this easy to use and is this issue-free. Basically, install it in your computer once and completely forget about it unless you want to format a hard drive or create a DVD for a Mac.

Depth of Options
The options are simple and complete: to read Mac discs, hard drives, CDs, and other media on a PC, to format PC hard drives, CDs, and other Media for Mac, and to basically allow a completely seamless work experience between both platforms.

Despite the fact that this isn't a laundery list of abilities, this is quite sufficient for my taste. The fact that I can edit an entire program on Premiere Pro 2, export it to my external Mac Drive, and take it to my Mac to burn the project to a DVD is awesome. There are many times where it's so much simpler to be able to do part of your work on one machine and transition to another machine to finish it off, especially if one machine is at work and the other machine is at home!

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