Formatting a USB harddrive for mac and pc

[Brian Williams]

I just received a 500Gb SATA hard drive and a USB 2.0 enclosure, Now I need to set it up so my son can swap files between PCs and Macs.  What format should I use to format this so it will go cross platform, NTFS or FAT3???

[charby]

Both should ways should work on a MAC, I know that FAT32 works great, haven't tried NTFS.

-C

[Iain]

Isn't NTFS closed source (proper term or not?) When I was using Ubuntu NTFS read support was fine, but write support was experimental and somewhat risky.

[Vodka7]

Unless they changed it, Macs can't write to NTFS, just read from it.  So stick with FAT32, which both support.  FAT32 has a four gig file size limit, so if you're using the drive for any type of major video work (backing VHS tapes up to DVD, or creating your own from DV or whatever), you're going to want to use a modern file system.  (Note: there are ways to author a DVD to get around the four gig limit.)

If you want to use a modern file system, you've got two options.  The free one is to keep the drive plugged in to the windows PC 24/7, and have the mac access it over the network in your house instead of through the USB cable (OSX can use the Windows File Sharing protocol.)  The commercial solution is to format the drive in HFS+ and install MacDrive on any PCs that will access the drive.

For what it's worth, I have a friend who had the exact same situation, and he ended up using MacDrive.  (He bought the two-license version, one for his windows desktop, and one for his girlfriend's laptop.  It's pretty cheap if you buy it that way.)  But, he needed to get around the four gig limit.

Edited to add: I just checked, and Mediafour has a decent single-license discount and a great five-license discount for students.  If he's in college, he can fax in a copy of his student ID and get it cheaper - http://www.mediafour.com/academic/education.asp

[Gewehr98]

I kept my 120gb USB/Firewire enclosure as FAT32. I also partitioned it into 4 separate 30gb partitions with different names.  (USB1, USB2, USB3, USB4)  It works fine on my sister's iMac G4, so we routinely swap MP3 and other files between it and my IBM Intellistation running XP Pro.  None of the files I transfer are over 4gb, so it works just fine.

Make sure whichever enclosure you bought has provisions for cooling, either with an internal fan or decent heatsinks for airflow around it.  I bought a very slimline version a few years ago and basically cooked the hard drive, and it was only a 7200 rpm version.