ext drive for use between a mac and pc

[SAWYER]

I have a 1.5 tb drive, what would be my best option to use it on both? One partition for mac and one for pc? What file type should I set up both as if I do it that way?

 

[Eug]

If just one filesystem, FAT32 works for both, but has no large file support.

Macs already have NTFS read support, but no write support. If you install Apple's Bootcamp HFS+ driver on the PC, you'll get HFS+ read support, but not write support.

Otherwise you can use a 3rd party NTFS driver for the Mac, or a 3rd party HFS+ driver for the PC, for full read-write support.

Or you can use exFAT.

 

[dagamer34]

Keep in mind that exFAT wasn't really designed for hard drives. If you'll be doing a lot if file sharing, I'd actually get a cheap NAS.

 

[Kaido]

Yup like Eug said, those are your choices. With FAT32, you're stuck at max 4GB per file. With NTFS, you'd need a driver for Mac - $20 from Paragon:

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

If you'd rather make a Mac-formatted drive, you can get MacDrive for Windows for $50:

http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive

I'd recommend going with the Mac plugin - not only is it cheaper (twenty bucks), but NTFS is more widely supported, since the majority of computers on the planet are Windows-based, so you can pretty much take it anywhere and use it if you need to.

 

[Childs]

exFAT works well for me.

 

[needcamryhelp]

Keep in mind that exFAT wasn't really designed for hard drives.

Can you explain how functionally that'd be a disadvantage?

 

[ViRGE]

Can you explain how functionally that'd be a disadvantage?

It's really not. There's no file system journaling (among other things), but it's a good FS for quick mounting and dismounting of external drives, which is what you would want.