External hard drive format for time machine

[Ridonze]

Hello everyone.

I'm a Mac newbie running Snow Leopard 10.6.5 on a 1TB internal HDD.

I've just bought a Samsung G3 Station 1.5TB external hard drive that I want to use to back up my mac but also for file storage that i want to access from mac as well as win xp.
Since mac as well as win xp reads and writes to exFAT format, I'm planning to format my drive using exFAT.
I would like to know if time machine will be able to see and write to this drive in the said format? I do not want to partition the drive for mac and windows separately and would prefer not using fusion software.

Thanks in advance

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Mac OS Extended / HFS+ is supported for TM HDDs.
exFAT is not.

MRoogle is a search engine.

 

[Mal]

Yep, Time Machine requires the HFS+ Journaled format, it will not work with an exFAT formatted disk. You either have to do separate partitions or buy MacDrive for Windows in order to read that disk from within Windows (and I don't know if I'd recommend that, not sure how it might deal with the Time Machine data with it's hardlinks).

jW

 

[GGJstudios]

FAT32 (File Allocation Table)

• Read/Write FAT32 from both native Windows and native Mac OS X.
• Maximum file size: 4GB.
• Maximum volume size: 2TB

NTFS (Windows NT File System)

• Read/Write NTFS from native Windows.
• Read only NTFS from native Mac OS X
• To Read/Write/Format NTFS from Mac OS X: Install NTFS-3G for Mac OS X (free)
• Some have reported problems using Tuxera (approx 33USD).
• Native NTFS support can be enabled in Snow Leopard, but is not advisable, due to instability.
• AirPort Extreme (802.11n) and Time Capsule do not support NTFS
• Maximum file size: 16 TB
• Maximum volume size: 256TB

HFS+ (Hierarchical File System, a.k.a. Mac OS Extended)

• Read/Write HFS+ from native Mac OS X
• Required for Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner backups of Mac internal hard drive.
• To Read/Write HFS+ from Windows, Install MacDrive
• To Read HFS+ (but not Write) from Windows, Install HFSExplorer
• Maximum file size: 8EiB
• Maximum volume size: 8EiB

exFAT (FAT64)

• Supported in Mac OS X only in 10.6.5 or later.
• exFAT partitions created with OS X 10.6.5 are inaccessible from Windows 7
• Not all Windows versions support exFAT. See disadvantages.
• exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table)
• AirPort Extreme (802.11n) and Time Capsule do not support exFAT
• Maximum file size: 16 EiB
• Maximum volume size: 64 ZiB