PC & Mac-friendly hard drive format?

spiers69 · June 10, 2006 8:04PM

hey all,

i've been given an external HD by a friend, and currently it's in some windows format and locked (the two issues are separate). This means it's read-only. Apparently i can only uncheck the read-only option with a PC (havent got one).

So as im running outta time, i was thinking i'd just reformat at but my pal uses a PC.

So my question: which format is PC-friendly?

Thank you.

noah93 · June 10, 2006 9:21PM

Quote:

Originally posted by spiers69

hey all,

i've been given an external HD by a friend, and currently it's in some windows format and locked (the two issues are separate). This means it's read-only. Apparently i can only uncheck the read-only option with a PC (havent got one).

So as im running outta time, i was thinking i'd just reformat at but my pal uses a PC.

So my question: which format is PC-friendly?

Thank you.

FAT32 is cross-platform compliant, as in both windows and mac can read/write. The only limitation is that the partition cannot be larger than 32 GB.

If you only need the mac to be able to write, you can format NTFS. This fixes the size limitation.

If you want both to read/write and have a partition larger than 32GB, you can format it HFS+, but you'll need a program to be able to use it in windows.

Noah

formerlurker · June 10, 2006 9:29PM

Quote:

If you only need the mac to be able to READ, you can format NTFS

t,ftfy

rminkler · June 10, 2006 10:20PM

This is just a guess, but I'd say that the drive isn't "locked", it's just formatted with NTFS (and thus read-only on your mac). Reformat the drive to fat32 and you'll be all set (back up anything on the drive before you do that!).

ichiban_jay · June 10, 2006 11:36PM

Quote:

Originally posted by noah93

If you only need the mac to be able to write, you can format NTFS. This fixes the size limitation.

If you want both to read/write and have a partition larger than 32GB, you can format it HFS+, but you'll need a program to be able to use it in windows.

Noah

I believe NTFS is read-only for mac, not write-able. FAT is read/write for both mac/pc.

If you choose another format from disk utility, it will not work with the pc without some playing around with.

kishan · June 11, 2006 5:30AM

I ran into this same issue when I bought my external hard drive. NTFS is read only in OS X. FAT32 is the format that is cross compatible with both operating systems. In FAT32 there is a file size limitation of 4GB. Something to keep in mind if you are running iMovie or iDVD projects on the external drive.

chych · June 11, 2006 6:10AM

FAT32 partition limitation is 2TB, the 32GB is just a Microsoft imposed limitation.

Ext2 or Ext3 is another option, where free drivers are available for Win/Mac (I know for Win there are, should be for Mac), and Ext3 is actually modern, so it has journaling and large file support, like HFS+ and NTFS (but not FAT32).

chucker · June 11, 2006 6:49AM

Actually, for Ext3, there's three problems: 1) its journaling only works on Linux, because it's implemented right in the kernel (I haven't heard of any ports of that implementation), 2) the Mac OS X driver works quite well on Panther, but not so on Tiger; the introduction of the KPI in Tiger made some changes necessary, and the developer hasn't had much time to make things stable and 3) (my obligatory flamebait) it just isn't a particularly good file system.

HFS+ is great. The one thing I wish it had is a free IFS (installable file system) driver for Windows. MacDrive is commercial and still not very bullet-proof.

noah93 · June 11, 2006 9:52AM

Quote:

I believe NTFS is read-only for mac, not write-able. FAT is read/write for both mac/pc.

Sorry about that, meant to say read-only. I was quite tired from studying for final exams.

Noah

spiers69 · June 16, 2006 9:26PM

i ran out of time. So i just burnt what i need to to DVD.

Thanks all the same.

PC & Mac-friendly hard drive format?

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