Today I found myself staring at a FireWire drive formatted under Mac OS X with not a Mac in sight but an urgent need to extract data from said drive.

A bit of Googling revealed HFSExplorer, an excellent piece of software by Erik Larsson which reads Mac formatted volumes under Windows. This is a lightweight Java application with full source code and executables. A quick install and at launch HFSExplorer will autodetect an HFS volume or ask me to choose a volume from a list. In moments I’m greeted with a fully-browsable directory listing of the Mac HFS volume.

Extracting a 2 GB file took a few minutes to complete but a progress bar guides you to fulfillment. A confirmation dialogue informs of completion and the file is at your disposal in Windows.

There are some limitations in volume types, such as Mac OS X Extended with Case Sensitivity, but your typical OS X Non/Journaled volume works fine.

HFSExplorer is a must-have for those times when you forget to copy your Mac-centric data files to Windows-friendly media.

Since January of this year I’ve been using Facebook to stay in touch with friends, colleagues, and other folks I don’t see often. There’s something to be said about seeing people’s faces every day which reminds you to stay in touch. Poke (and SuperPoke) is the greatest way to tell someone “hi” without getting into a dialog.

Since Facebook wants to make a few dollars in their effort to provide free services, they’ve initiated clandestine tactics to gather and distribute your surfing habits to others. Facebook’s Beacon software isn’t terribly popular for this reason but there are ways to keep it quiet.

wikiHow describes the proper way to disable Beacon in Facebook’s security settings as well as the BlockSite add-on for Firefox. Although the article doesn’t mention this you can use the BlockSite add-on in Flock (which, like Firefox, is based on Mozilla.

Manas Tungare describes how to filter out Beacon in the Mac version of Safari. I haven’t installed PithHelmet to test because it appears only in beta status for Safari 3 (which ships with Leopard).

From what I’ve been reading at CreativeCOW and elsewhere, the current generation of MacBook Pros and Mac Pros use a single FireWire bus for the 1394a and 1394b ports. Thus, attaching a FW400 and FW800 device simultaneously will cause both to operate at FW400 speeds.

Putting this in the context of Final Cut Pro, it’s not an issue with SD footage because FW400 has plenty of bandwidth. A forum topic at CreativeCOW suggested that HD content be edited on eSATA drives but I’ve used ProRes422 files on FW400 without any problems. Mind you, cutting not capturing.

If separate buses are required, outfit your Mac Pro with a FireWire PCI card or in the case of the MacBook Pro use an ExpressCard.

Editing with Final Cut Pro on a laptop has a distinct advantage during a power outage. The laptop’s battery kicks in and nothing is compromised. Unless, of course, you’re using an external hard drive.

I was capturing footage the other day and pondered the thought of a battery backup system, not for my MBP, but the connected drives. Murphy struck a day later when the power went out. Along with my 500 GB IcyDock, 750 GB Maximus, and 2 TB G-RAID.

Fortunately, there was no data loss and Final Cut Pro’s Autosave kept my project intact. I’m on the lookout for a UPS providing 900+ VA to avoid a future disaster. It’s all about saving and shutting down and the $100-150 investment is peanuts compared to DriveSavers.