Hard Drive attached to Airport Extreme: HSF+ or FAT32?

[mshan]

I've got a WD5000AACS on the way and want to connect it to my Airport Extreme in an Antec MX-100 external usb enclosure.

What is best choice for hard drive format in a mixed Apple and Windows environment? (HSF+ or FAT32)

Also, would HSF+ be journaled or not?

And would media on this hard drive show up as a universal Windows plug and play volume in a PS3 or XMBC on an Apple TV?

 

[sourceninja]

The airport shares the drive so it can share via SMB. This means the format does not matter from an OS point of view. I would go with HFS+.

 

[mshan]

Journaled, or not journaled?

 

[keeleysam]

I'd do HFS+ Journaled, as you'll be able to store files over 2GB and it should be faster and waste less space due to the file system. The journaled part won't really matter directly, but it'll speed things up if you ever plug it into your Mac directly.

 

[TheStu]

I thought FAT32 file size limit was 4GB? However, the point remains that FAT32 has a file size limit, whereas HFS+ effectively does not.

 

[mshan]

Can anyone explain exactly what journaling is, and the pros / cons of choosing that option (with HSF+) for the Airport Disk specifically, and also for any disk attached to a Mac in general (I just know you are supposed to used journaled with system drive inside my iMac).

 

[TheStu]

Journaling helps to prevent data corruption in the event of a power failure. Changes are written to a log before the data is actually copied over.

 

[mshan]

Any downsides to journaling any non-system hard drives?

 

[TheStu]

I cannot think of any downsides, so just go ahead and use it.

All my HFS drives are formatted HFS+ (Journaled) and I don't really see any problems.