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External HDD backup

R

R1CH4RD 21

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 8, 2009
27
0
I have just brought an external HDD to back up all my documents etc. I need to back up documents from both mac and windows operating systems. I read that for macs it is best to format the drive in HSF Extended + Journaling format. Will this format work with windows also? What is the best format to use?

Thanks for any help
Richard
 
HFS+ can only be read and written to in Windows with the help of the software MacDrive.

If you don't use Time Machine, you can format your external HDD with FAT32 (MS-DOS in Disk Utility), and so can read and write to with Mac OS X and Windows.
But the biggest size allowed for one file is 4GB on an FAT32 formatted rive.

There is also MacFuse and NTFS-3G to write to NTFS (Windows) formatted volumes in Mac OS X.
 
Is 4GB for individual files or complete folders? Also would I get any benefits from using time capsule? Can this be used alongside a windows OS?
 
4GB is for individual files.

Time Capsule is an external HDD only meant for Mac OS' Time Machine, not for Windows.

You could also get an external HDD and partition it with two file systems, one HFS+ for Time Machine, the other in FAT32 for using it with both OSs.
 
spinnerlys said:
4GB is for individual files.

Time Capsule is an external HDD only meant for Mac OS' Time Machine, not for Windows.

You could also get an external HDD and partition it with two file systems, one HFS+ for Time Machine, the other in FAT32 for using it with both OSs.
Click to expand...

does the HDD need to be wifi for Time machine?
 
And can I partition it with a program that came with my mac or do i need to get another one?
 
Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility

http://macs.about.com/od/applications/ss/diskutilitypart.htm

Disk_Utility_After_Partition.png
 
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