common disk format - read/write on apple + pc?

[zimu]

hey guys,

so i thought that NTFS partition on my USB disk would work on both pc and mac. its a 160gb 2.5" enclosure.

so i did the formatting and it seems that the apple (macbook) sees only 25 or so gb out of the 120gb of data on the drive right now.

i then reformatted it using the mac standard format (forgot what its called) but then the PC wouldn't even recognize the drive...

any idea how to go about formatting this thing so that both the mac and pc can read and write to the drive?

 

[Viper0329]

Format it with FAT32, which can be read and written by both the Mac and PC. Or, keep it HSF+ (Mac file system) and install Macdrive on the PC

 

[ColdFusion718]

Or you can keep it as HSF+ then install MacDrive on your PC so that it can be read.

 

[hellfire88]

Or you can do the "reverse", and format it to NTFS, and buy this "Paragon NTFS driver for Mac" (~$40 though 🙁 ):

http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/

It allows you to read AND write to NTFS volumes. I tried the 10day trial briefly, and it seems to work ok.

 

[zimu]

Originally posted by: Viper0329
Format it with FAT32, which can be read and written by both the Mac and PC. Or, keep it HSF+ (Mac file system) and install Macdrive on the PC

for some reason can't format using FAT32. drive too big? (160gb).

this would be the ideal situation, without needing to get carried away with 3rd party tools etc.

what i don't get is why does a USB stick in ntfs format (my kingston2gb) work on both the mac/pc read and write?

 

[aphex]

Originally posted by: zimu

Originally posted by: Viper0329
Format it with FAT32, which can be read and written by both the Mac and PC. Or, keep it HSF+ (Mac file system) and install Macdrive on the PC

for some reason can't format using FAT32. drive too big? (160gb).

Nope, definitely not the size of the drive. My friend just formatted his 1TB drive in fat32, worked fine.

Personally though, although fat32 works on both PC & Mac, i'm not a big fan due to the 4gb per file size limit.

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: hellfire88
Or you can do the "reverse", and format it to NTFS, and buy this "Paragon NTFS driver for Mac" (~$40 though 🙁 ):

http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/

It allows you to read AND write to NTFS volumes. I tried the 10day trial briefly, and it seems to work ok.

Why pay when you don't need to? With MACFuse and the NTFS-3G driver, you can have NTFS read/write abilities for free. I use it on my Leo box and it works great. It's just a port of the Linux NTFS implementation, after all.

This is what I'd go with for any multiplatform shared disk situation, NTFS is the new FAT32.

 

[Nothinman]

what i don't get is why does a USB stick in ntfs format (my kingston2gb) work on both the mac/pc read and write?

Without extra software it doesn't, if it does then any other drive with NTFS will also work.

 

[bearxor]

Originally posted by: zimu

Originally posted by: Viper0329
Format it with FAT32, which can be read and written by both the Mac and PC. Or, keep it HSF+ (Mac file system) and install Macdrive on the PC

for some reason can't format using FAT32. drive too big? (160gb).

this would be the ideal situation, without needing to get carried away with 3rd party tools etc.

what i don't get is why does a USB stick in ntfs format (my kingston2gb) work on both the mac/pc read and write?

Do it using Apple's disk utility in OS X. If you try to format it in Vista, FAT32 isn't an option.