Topic: What filesystem to use for OSX+Win2k/XP?

[MattD]

I have a firewire drive that I'm planning on sharing between multiple computer types. How should I format this drive (and which OS should I use to do this) if I want to be able to read and write from the drive under either OS?

[Steve J]

I have my external drive formatted to XP; and I can pull files off with no problem with my Mac. I don't know if the reverse can be said (i.e., pulling files into a WinXP machine from a drive formated with OS X).

[MattD]

By XP, I assume you mean NTFS? (This is a 200GB drive, so FAT32 won't do here.)

[Steve J]

Right, I have my drives formatted to NTFS; although I am able to read drives that are formatted in FAT32 as well. Found this out not too long ago when some one sent me a drive that was in FAT32. I loaded it into the enclosure and I was able to read it from my WinXP tower and my Powerbook.

[Nick in Edinboro]

I think  Mac OS X 10.3 gained the ability to read NTFS drives.

I would format it through Windows, NTFS.

[Nick in Edinboro]

Eh.. No, apparently it suports only read access to NTFS.  But this is based on 10.3.9...  Didn't a new version (tiger?) just come out.

This isn't a terrible idea but yet again, screws you a bit... The article describes that you should format it to ext2 and then it's read/write for Mac OS + Linux and readonly for Windows...

How about FAT32 and about 20 partitions?

[MattD]

Standardizing a filesystem would be a nice thing in the computer world. I think I'll go with NTFS and keep an old Windows box around just to write to the damn thing. I wonder if I can write to an NTFS drive on a Windows machine over a network from OSX.

[Nick in Edinboro]

Standardizing a filesystem would be a nice thing in the computer world. I think I'll go with NTFS and keep an old Windows box around just to write to the damn thing. I wonder if I can write to an NTFS drive on a Windows machine over a network from OSX.

Well, they are all standards, it's just a matter of who supports what standards

That is a definate viable option, terminal service into the Windows box to write to the drive.  You could also setup FTP on the windows box and transfer files back and forth that way instead of a "drag and drop" from a mounted drive in OS X.

[nic]

I have a firewire drive that I connect back and forth to OSX and XP, but usually I just FTP/drag-drop to mounted shares on my server to share files between the 2 systems.

the firewire drive that I sometimes use is formatted Mac OS extended and I have a program on my XP box called MacDrive that read/writes in Mac OS extended format(complete with resource forks!)

[OFOTD]

You can write from a Mac across a network to a NTFS drive.   File systems are really just ways from an OS to organize things (real simplistic explanation here btw) and to assign security permissions.  On my network at home I have 8 external drives formatted in NTFS and use my G4 and MacMini both to read and write to them both.  And I am NOT running Tiger (yet!)

[waffffffle]

OS X still only supports read-only access to NTFS volumes.  This is simply because NTFS write access is difficult to achieve because NTFS is a proprietary Microsoft format and is not well documented.  Most linux distros only support NTFS read-only access by default because writing to an NTFS volume is potentially destructive.  No one has come up with a reliable NTFS driver for writing other than Microsoft.  Apple's HFS formats, while proprietary to Apple, have been extensively documented by Apple and posted for all to learn from on the Apple Developer Connection web site. 

If you want a disk that is universally supported by all platforms you're stuck with FAT.  As mentioned above you could use ext but you would need to install the ext driver on Mac and Windows, and any other machine you may come across that you might want to connect the drive to.  A friend of mine had this same problem but he instead decided to format the drive for Mac (HFS+) and install MacDrive on his PC.  The software isn't free but they have a trial. 

[Evil Taper]

What about running a windows emulator on your OSX machine to trick it into working?.....I'm not sure if there's a Windows emulator for the Mac systems but I know Linux has both Mac/Windows emulators and it does solve compatability issues, might be worth a poke around.

[crunchy]

I've been using a USB2 external drive that has been working well reading and writing with both 10.3 and XP. I formatted in 10.3 in DOS format. The only drawback is the 4.5 gig (or close to it) file size limit. But that's a limitation of fat32 as well.

[MattD]

But no DISK size limit if you format that way? The reason I ask is b/c this is with a 200 GB drive.

[JasonR]

Lots of misinformation in this thread!  FAT32 has a max partition size of 2TB.  It does have a limitation with regard to large FILE support, but the max is 4GB which is pretty reasonable for most purposes including 24-bit audio (since the WAVE standard has its own limitation at the 2GB mark).  FAT32 devices are well supported for read and write access from both Windows and OS X systems and is an ideal choice for cross-compatibility.

- Jason

[crunchy]

I am using a 200GB (186GB actual size) Segate Drive and it has been working well as one large partition with both systems.

But no DISK size limit if you format that way? The reason I ask is b/c this is with a 200 GB drive.

[MattD]

Bump for another question because I'm finally trying to put this drive in:

Is the only way to format a 200 GB drive in a FW/USB case with the FAT32 format to use OSX to format? I can't format in Win2k/XP because they can't format a drive larger than 30ish GB to FAT32. I can't format from a bootdisk because I can't access a FW/USB drive from there. This is absolutely maddening. The MS website says it can read/access large FAT32 partitions, but not create them.

I am confused as all hell. If someone can confirm whether OSX can read AND write to a NTFS-formatted drive that is 200GB, I'll use that. Otherwise, I guess I'll have to use OSX to format the drive as a large FAT32 drive and see if Win2k/XP can handle reading and writing to it after that.

[JasonR]

Matt,

Yeah, given Windows limitation of 32GB while formatting FAT32 partitions, you'd have to work around that.  Microsoft suggests formatting in another OS (your OSX box should do the job perfectly).  To do it in DOS would require a boot disk that loads the USB or Firewire drivers so you can access the drive, or you could remove it from the case and connect it directly to an IDE interface.  Hopefully there's no crazy limitation like this from within a DOS version of fdisk and format.

Good luck!
- Jason

[scb]

the mac os used to have an issue with moounting fat32 higher than 137 gigs, so not sure 10.4 did anything to fix this.  so if it can't mount it, i'm guessing it can't format it

ask wayne