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Best HD format for both OSX / XP

B

Bongolo

macrumors regular
Original poster
Hi Guys,

What is the best way to format an external HD so I can read and write from both OSX and XP? 😕

I would rather not format in fat 32 though because of the file size limitation.

TIA

/Bongolo
 
FAT32's really your only option unless you buy MacDrive. You might be able to use a Linux/Unix format too, assuming that somebody's made a Windows driver (that might not be the right term) for it.
 
Many thank for the prompt reply Nermal, much appreciated. 🙂

I will look into the options you suggested.

/Bongolo
 
Nermal said:
FAT32's really your only option unless you buy MacDrive. You might be able to use a Linux/Unix format too, assuming that somebody's made a Windows driver (that might not be the right term) for it.
Click to expand...


I thought FAT32 is limited to 32GB, or is that only in the case of bootcamp?
 
nope. I got a 160GB Fat 32 ext HD running now. I use it to keep my XP ganes on so my bootcamp partition is small
 
XP can not format a drive that is larger than 32GB in Fat32. However disk utility in os X can format a drive larger than 32GB as fat32. This is a limitation of Windows (a limitation in place deliberately to make users upgrade to NTFS)

Fat32 can not have a file that is 4Gbs or larger on the drive.

So if you need files that are larger than 4Gbs then you must user NTFS or some other UNIX option as discussed above.
 
bcavanau said:
You could use EXT2 file system.

Not natively supported on Mac or Win, but drivers are available for both. EXT@ is used in Linux, so with the 2 drivers you would be able to use the drive on Window, OS X, and Linux.

No 4GB limit, etc...but a little extra hassle...

Mac Driver ---> http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsx/
Win Driver ---> http://www.fs-driver.org/download.html

Just passing on an option...
Click to expand...

That is probably a good idea, assuming the drivers are decent for both. It is only bad if you want to use your HD with another person's PC (which is only an issue for an external).
 
Hi guys,

To make life simpler, I decided to go for MacDrive.

However if you guys are interested, I use the attached utility to format any size drive to FAT32 with XP. 😉

/Bongolo
 

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