Is FAT32 the best file system for writing and reading files off of a drive shared between Macs and PC's? I've found that Macs can read NTFS but not write them. Also, what are the drawbacks to partitioning an external hard drive with the two different systems/ is this possible?
it's possible to partition an external hard drive with different file systems...from what i remember fat32 cannot read ntfs but ntfs can read fat32...if this is true, then the partition with fat32 limits it to saving files created with fat32 or fat16 file system...
OSX can read an NTFS drive or partition, but not write to it (or only write to it in a very experimental, whoops-there-goes-all-your-data way).
Windows can read and write to an HFS+ drive (what OSX uses) with the addition of third-party software.
Both can read and write FAT32.
It is absolutely possible to partition a drive with as many different formats as you like.
According to Windows, you can't format a FAT32 partition bigger than 32GB. Windows is wrong: using other tools, you can format a partitin up to 125GB. Major limitations of FAT32 are: no files bigger than 4GB, and no support for the resource fork. The latter means that if you use OSX to access a FAT32 drive, it leaves all those annoying dot-whatever files all over the place. FAT32 also doesn't support Windows's access control much.
Your only real alternatives are to use a FAT32 partition for maximum compatibility; or an HFS+ partition using MacDrive.
If you're using Linux as well, and want to be able to access the drive from all three systems, you're pretty much stuck with FAT32, because HFS+ in linux is still in beta.
FAT or not?
Is FAT32 the best file system for writing and reading files off of a drive shared between Macs and PC's? I've found that Macs can read NTFS but not write them. Also, what are the drawbacks to partitioning an external hard drive with the two different systems/ is this possible?
it's possible to partition an external hard drive with different file systems...from what i remember fat32 cannot read ntfs but ntfs can read fat32...if this is true, then the partition with fat32 limits it to saving files created with fat32 or fat16 file system...
OSX can read an NTFS drive or partition, but not write to it (or only write to it in a very experimental, whoops-there-goes-all-your-data way).
Windows can read and write to an HFS+ drive (what OSX uses) with the addition of third-party software.
Both can read and write FAT32.
It is absolutely possible to partition a drive with as many different formats as you like.
According to Windows, you can't format a FAT32 partition bigger than 32GB. Windows is wrong: using other tools, you can format a partitin up to 125GB. Major limitations of FAT32 are: no files bigger than 4GB, and no support for the resource fork. The latter means that if you use OSX to access a FAT32 drive, it leaves all those annoying dot-whatever files all over the place. FAT32 also doesn't support Windows's access control much.
Your only real alternatives are to use a FAT32 partition for maximum compatibility; or an HFS+ partition using MacDrive.
If you're using Linux as well, and want to be able to access the drive from all three systems, you're pretty much stuck with FAT32, because HFS+ in linux is still in beta.
thx!
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