External Hard Drive Formatting for Movies

[snowwing]

I have a Western Digital 1TB bus powered external hard drive to store digital content on... movies, music, video clips. I also plan on using it with a Western Digital Live TV Plus.

My confusion comes with which format to use. I am obviously using a Mac now. I have some movies on my old Windows machine - formatted NTFS.

Is it possible to put these movies (MP4) on my new drive if it is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)?

Thanks
Ron

 

[simsaladimbamba]

According to the manual (http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/UM/ENG/4779-705043.pdf), it can support FAT32, NTFS and HFS+.

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

 

[Andeavor]

If the external drive is formatted with HFS+ you need a program like MacDrive to read it with a Windows machine.

 

[snowwing]

Thanks for your quick response!

My question was more on the lines of transferring a file from a NTFS formatted drive to a Mac OS extended drive. In other words if I copy a file to a flash drive from my windows machine and copy to my mac does it matter what the underlying format is? NTFS or Mac OSX?
Thanks

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Thanks for your quick response!

My question was more on the lines of transferring a file from a NTFS formatted drive to a Mac OS extended drive. In other words if I copy a file to a flash drive from my windows machine and copy to my mac does it matter what the underlying format is? NTFS or Mac OSX?
Thanks

As you might have glanced at the FAQ I quoted about the different file systems, you can only write to NTFS and FAT32 formatted volumes in Windows without additional help. Mac OS X is capable to read volumes using these file systems (formats).
Therefore, if you use a USB stick formatted with FAT32 you can then copy data from Windows to Mac OS X.

 

[samh]

Thanks for your quick response!

My question was more on the lines of transferring a file from a NTFS formatted drive to a Mac OS extended drive. In other words if I copy a file to a flash drive from my windows machine and copy to my mac does it matter what the underlying format is? NTFS or Mac OSX?
Thanks

No, the underlying file format of the original file does not matter. The operating system doing the copying will do the required translating.

 

[snowwing]

I believe I understand. Thank You!