Airport Extreme - External HDD Format

PhotoBill said:

I'm wondering what the best file format would be for an external HDD connected to the Airport Extreme...I have a mixed environment some Apple machines, and a few Windows machines, and I'd like all of them to be able to access all of the data on the drive.

Advice....

Thanks,
Bill

Click to expand...

It doesn't matter for the AEBS. You have to pick what's best for you. Here are the most popular choices:


FAT32 - Will have full access from both Mac and PC, but have to deal with 4GB filesize limit.
NTFS - Will have full access from PC and read only from Mac... though I'm sure there are some third party apps out there that will allow you to write to NTFS from your Mac.
HFS+ - Will have full access from Mac but your PC will not have a clue what to do with it unless you have a third party app such as MacDrive.

I suggest HFS+ Journaled... it's what I use along with MacDrive on my PC's. HFS+ is just a superior file system to NTFS, and I hate FAT32. It's all really personal preference.

JimmyDThing said:

NTFS - Will have full access from PC and read only from Mac... though I'm sure there are some third party apps out there that will allow you to write to NTFS from your Mac.

Click to expand...

The AEBS won't support NTFS period.

Mindflux said:

The AEBS won't support NTFS period.

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Huh... I didn't realize this. NTFS was going to be a last resort so I never really even looked into it. Thanks for correcting me!

nvm...was talking about TC

There is no need to use the antiquated FAT32. You CAN share a HFS+ drive with PCs with no problem. Because Airport Extreme in this case is a actually a file server (a NAS - network-attached storage), not a physical disk that connects to your PC. See my post here for a longer discussion.