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The Use of Dual Hard Drives

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yoman1234

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 17, 2010
5
0
I am in an odd predicament. I recently bought a 160GB SSD and I have the stock HD for my MBP 2010 (250GB). I'm planning to install the stock drive as a secondary drive within my MacBook (i.e. OptiBay, etc.). As of right now I have partitioned my stock drive equally: 1 for Windows (Bootcamp) and 1 for Mac.

Since I just want to install my core files and applications on my SSD, I want to use my external drive to hold documents, music, videos, downloads, or etc. Now since I'll be saving files on both sides of my OSs, do I need to do anything special to the second hard drive?

Basically: Can I store OSX-formatted files and Windows-formatted files on my secondary drive and access them properly?
 
Last edited:
johnhurley

johnhurley

macrumors 6502a
Aug 29, 2011
777
56
yoman1234 said:
I am in an odd predicament. I recently bought a 160GB SSD and I have the stock HD for my MBP 2010 (250GB). I'm planning to install the stock drive as a secondary drive within my MacBook (i.e. OptiBay, etc.). As of right now I have partitioned my stock drive equally: 1 for Windows (Bootcamp) and 1 for Mac.

Since I just want to install my core files and applications on my SSD, I want to use my external drive to hold documents, music, videos, downloads, or etc. Now since I'll be saving files on both sides of my OSs, do I need to do anything special to the second hard drive?

Basically: Can I store OSX-formatted files and Windows-formatted files on my secondary drive and access them properly?
Click to expand...

If you format the 2nd drive in one big partition as exFAT both win 7 and mac os x should support read and write access.
 
Y

yoman1234

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 17, 2010
5
0
johnhurley said:
If you format the 2nd drive in one big partition as exFAT both win 7 and mac os x should support read and write access.
Click to expand...

Wow, I never heard of this system... I'm pretty clueless haha. Are there any risks or precautions I should know about this?

Also would formatting the SSD as exFAT be advisible as well since it's also shared between the 2 OSs?

Edit: Did some research and came upon this link: http://girlyngeek.blogspot.com/2011/08/comparison-of-ntfs-drivers-for-mac-os-x.html.

It says that in exFAT under the feature comparison, "Partial support means it's stored in '._' files, supported that it's stored as the filesystem designed them to be stored, and unsupported that they simply, won't work.".

It suggested Tuxera instead.

Edit 2: Can I write exFAT files onto NTFS hard drives? I haven't been able to find a clear answer from looking around?
 
Last edited:
Y

yoman1234

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 17, 2010
5
0
yoman1234 said:
Basically: Can I store OSX-formatted files and Windows-formatted files on my secondary drive and access them properly?
Click to expand...

Bump since no one replied. If I make it exFAT, do I have to also make my SSD exFAT as well to write/read?
 
D

DockMac

macrumors regular
Dec 22, 2008
184
1
IIRC, OS X needs to run on a Mac OS Extended formatted drive, compatible with only Mac. Use Mac OS Extended for your main drive.

ExFAT is essentially FAT files sytem in 64-bit, which is compatible with Mac and Win. Use ExFat for your secondary drive. Any of the FAT 16/32/64 should be compatible with Mac and Win. DO NOT format with FAT 16 or 32, as there are some problems with file sizes when copying files on to the drive. DO NOT format the secondary drive NTFS, unless you do some workarounds to get Mac to read NTFS.
 
Y

yoman1234

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 17, 2010
5
0
DockMac said:
IIRC, OS X needs to run on a Mac OS Extended formatted drive, compatible with only Mac. Use Mac OS Extended for your main drive.

ExFAT is essentially FAT files sytem in 64-bit, which is compatible with Mac and Win. Use ExFat for your secondary drive. Any of the FAT 16/32/64 should be compatible with Mac and Win. DO NOT format with FAT 16 or 32, as there are some problems with file sizes when copying files on to the drive. DO NOT format the secondary drive NTFS, unless you do some workarounds to get Mac to read NTFS.
Click to expand...

Okay so I can leave the files alone on the SSD to the standard ones (Mac - Extended, Windows - NTFS) and format the secondary to exFAT and thus I can access read/write from either OS sides?
 
johnhurley

johnhurley

macrumors 6502a
Aug 29, 2011
777
56
yoman1234 said:
Okay so I can leave the files alone on the SSD to the standard ones (Mac - Extended, Windows - NTFS) and format the secondary to exFAT and thus I can access read/write from either OS sides?
Click to expand...

Yup ... thought I said earlier "If you format the 2nd drive in one big partition as exFAT both win 7 and mac os x should support read and write access." ...
 
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