Topic: external HD for Windows & Mac

[JasonSobel]

in the near future, I am going to be copying ~500-600 GB of data for a friend.  He's got a Mac, and I only have Windows computers (I've got one running XP, and another with Windows 7).  I'm going to copy the data onto a 1 TB drive, so after I copy the data to the drive, it's has to be read/write on the mac (not just read-only).

Most external hard drives that I've seen come formatted with NTFS.  If I understand things correctly, NTFS is read only on a mac (my friend will be able to see and use the data that I've copied for him, but won't be able to add anything new to the drive).  To get around that, I was thinking that I'd re-format the drive to FAT32 before copying any data.  That would allow read/write access from both my Windows machine and his Mac.  But, if I recall correctly, I think FAT32 has a 4gb file size limit.  I've got some large MKV files (6-12gb in range), so now I don't think FAT32 will work.

any ideas?  am I right about NTFS?

[Fatah Ruark (aka MIKE B)]

I think you can buy a program for the Mac that will allow it to see NTFS drives.

I gave up on Mac a few years ago, so I'm not sure of the name. I'm sure Google will know.

FAT32 can be read by a Mac but you're correct. there is a 4GB file size limit.

If the one of the computers is a laptop/portable you could always format the drive for the Mac and send the files over your network to the external drive hooked up to the Mac.

[JasonSobel]

I think you can buy a program for the Mac that will allow it to see NTFS drives.

I thought Mac's could "see" NTFS drives by default.  but that they were read-only drives, and couldn't write data to NTFS formatted drives.  Is that correct?

FAT32 can be read by a Mac but you're correct. there is a 4GB file size limit.

I thought FAT32 could be read and written to by Macs.  Is that not correct?  probably a moot point anyway, because FAT32 isn't an option because of the 4gb file size limit.

If the one of the computers is a laptop/portable you could always format the drive for the Mac and send the files over your network to the external drive hooked up to the Mac.

not an option, as my friend is 8 hours away, and the external hard drive will be traveling by mail.

[Fatah Ruark (aka MIKE B)]

A Google search turned up this info:

http://techqa.wordpress.com/2008/07/07/can-mac-read-and-write-to-ntfs-drives/

http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/

[JasonSobel]

thanks for the info.  from those links, and a little more searching around, it looks like NTFS-3G is the way to go:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/ntfs3g.html

it's free for my friend to install/download, and it's new and current.