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Options besides Fat32?

newtekie1

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What options are their, if any, that I can format a drive in that would be compatible with both Windows and Mac OSX?

Mainly I'm looking to avoid the file size limit with Fat32.

I know I can format the drive as NTFS, but then I can't write to it from my Mac, so I need something that I can read and write from both Platforms.
 

Easy Rhino

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does windows recognize ext3 or ext4 ?
 

Frick

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streetfighter 2

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I have some experience with this subject.

One of my friends wanted a USB storage drive but he wanted to transfer data freely between his Mac and his friend's PCs. He also needed support for files larger than what FAT32 supports.

I started by creating two partitions on his (2TB) USB drive, one for NTFS (the storage bit) and one HFS+ (journaled) so he could use Time Machine.

In order to bring NTFS support to mac I started with the free NTFS-3G driver, but found that it couldn't sustain high enough transfer rates for streaming HD movies. This speed issue was apparently fixed in the pay version of NTFS-3G, which is called Tuxera NTFS.

I never bothered trying Tuxera NTFS but instead went with Paragon NTFS because it was cheap ($20), had incredibly good reviews and came from a company I've had experience with. After installing Paragon NTFS I can say that it is incredibly fast and thoroughly stable. No complaints whatsoever.

Anyway, that's one way of tackling the problem. You may be able to get away cheaper, but I don't think you can make it any any easier.
 

Wile E

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I use Paragon on my Macs, as it was reasonably priced, easier to deal with, and has proven itself quite stable.

But there is NTFS read/write support built into Snow Leopard. You just have to enable it per drive in fstab. http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090913140023382

And a GUI to do the same: http://ntfsmounter.com/

I also use MacDrive on my PCs to enable read/write support to HFS+ volumes. Comes in handy for fixing borked kext installs on the Hackintosh, without resorting to using the command line. lol.
 

Frick

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Cool, I had no idea you could do that.
 
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