Hard Drive Disk Formatting Question
Alright, So I recently transitioned to a MBP and am very satisfied. I took my 300 GB NTFS HDD from my PC and made it an external. My problem is that I realize that OSX cannot write to NTFS and I need to store Videos and Music I make on my MBP on it. I know these are my options:
--HFS+ and get MacDrive so I can use it on PC, I may not always be using it on just my home PC, sometime others, like school where I cannot install programs.
--FAT32 But I doing video editing and my files are likely to be bigger than 4GB and thats not managable.
Do I have any other options? I need to be able to use it on PC and Mac, both with Read/Write capabilities and would like not have to install software on every PC I use it on.
--HFS+ and get MacDrive so I can use it on PC, I may not always be using it on just my home PC, sometime others, like school where I cannot install programs.
--FAT32 But I doing video editing and my files are likely to be bigger than 4GB and thats not managable.
Do I have any other options? I need to be able to use it on PC and Mac, both with Read/Write capabilities and would like not have to install software on every PC I use it on.
Comments
As you said, if you go with HFS+, you'll need MacDrive on any PC you will be working on. If you have install privileges on the PCs that you need to work with, you could create a small FAT32 partition with the MacDrive installer, install the software when you need it, and remove it when you're done, but that's more than slightly inconvenient and tedious.
With NTFS, you'll need a write solution for the Mac. That would be Parallels + Windows. People are working on open-source NTFS write support, but they're a long way from being reliable.
Sorry that both of these options suck.
--HFS+ and get MacDrive so I can use it on PC, I may not always be using it on just my home PC, sometime others, like school where I cannot install programs.
I'd go with that option over fat32.
I think another reason why fat32 is bad is I read it only supports a maximum partition size of 32GB. This would mean your drive would need around 10 partitions.
On the NTFS side however, what you could try is networking your home PC via ethernet or firewire to your MBP. Then transfer files onto the NTFS drive from your PC and that way you can use the NTFS drive at school.
If NTFS write worked under Parallels, that would also be a good solution because you just need to drop a file into your shared folder and copy it over.
On the NTFS side however, what you could try is networking your home PC via ethernet or firewire to your MBP. Then transfer files onto the NTFS drive from your PC and that way you can use the NTFS drive at school.
Oops, didn't read the OP properly.
This should work well. If you're using 100 Mbit networking, you should be safe working in real-time with any video under 3 MB/s (24 Mb/s).
I think another reason why fat32 is bad is I read it only supports a maximum partition size of 32GB.
Untrue. The formatting utility of Windows 2000 and newer only supports creating FAT32 partitions that are 32 GBs or smaller, but many other systems, including Mac OS X, ship with FAT32 formatting utilities that can easily create much larger FAT32 partitions.
---120GB HFS+ For Video editing because I shouldn't need to ever transfer it to my PC, if so i can get MacDrive.
---120Gb FAT 32 For everything else as a swap drive, music, docs, random installers and such. FYI FAT32 can be up to 2TiB but individual file sizes cannot be bigger than 4 GBs.
---25GB NTFS to install Vista, i can only run it when I plug it in via IDE. Oh well.
Thanks for everyones help.