FAT32 and DVD Backup

[JimmyDThing]

I'm in the market for an external hard drive... a USB 2.0 hard drive so I can use it with the AirPort Extreme. On it I plan on storing almost all Media and it will need to be accessible for reading and writing by both Mac and PC so I'll have to format it FAT32.

The problem is, I want to back-up some DVD's and I don't want to use any video compression... but FAT32 only allows files of 4GB or less and DVD's 4.71GB... any advice? On anything... from the file system on the Hard Drive to breaking the DVD apart... which I would love to avoid.

Thanks!

 

[tracetritt]

I'm in the market for an external hard drive... a USB 2.0 hard drive so I can use it with the AirPort Extreme. On it I plan on storing almost all Media and it will need to be accessible for reading and writing by both Mac and PC so I'll have to format it FAT32.

The problem is, I want to back-up some DVD's and I don't want to use any video compression... but FAT32 only allows files of 4GB or less and DVD's 4.71GB... any advice? On anything... from the file system on the Hard Drive to breaking the DVD apart... which I would love to avoid.

Thanks!

If you are sharing a drive over the network you can still write to ntfs with the Mac. you may want to go with that. hope this helps.

Tyler

 

[jnolas2]

According to Apple:

The AirPort Extreme (802.11n) supports USB storage devices that have a block size of 512 bytes, and are formatted as Mac OS Extended (HFS-plus), FAT16, or FAT32. Not all USB storage devices use a block size of 512 bytes.

Connecting a NTFS drive to the Airport Extreme's USB port will not work because that file system is not supported. If the drive is connected to a Windows PC and drive sharing is turned on, then your Mac should be able to work with it.

If you want to connect the drive using Airport Extreme's USB port, then you can format the drive in the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format and a Windows PC will see it as a networked drive that is FAT32. The only issue with that is that since the Windows side would see it as a FAT32 drive, you probably could not copy files bigger than 4 GB to it from Windows. However, doing so from OS X should work just fine.

 

[DoFoT9]

just format the drive as HFS+. it WILL work with PC's.

 

[JimmyDThing]

Thanks everybody, for your help.

just format the drive as HFS+. it WILL work with PC's.

A PC can read AND write to HFS+? I thought you needed an app to do that... I guess I could get one, but I didn't really want to.

If I do need an app, any suggestions? Are there any limitations on the PC with it? Thanks.

 

[DoFoT9]

Thanks everybody, for your help.

A PC can read AND write to HFS+? I thought you needed an app to do that... I guess I could get one, but I didn't really want to.

If I do need an app, any suggestions? Are there any limitations on the PC with it? Thanks.

when networking, it doesnt matter on the format of the drive, only of the transmission medium. in AEBS case it will be using SMB or something similar. windows can read SMB, osx can read SMB, so therefore the harddrives can be read by the OS that can read SMB.

 

[JimmyDThing]

Oh, cool... thanks!

 

[l33r0y]

You CAN use FAT32....

...just make sure when you are backing up the video DVD you leave the directory structure in tact, as video DVD's themselves do not use files above 1Gb.

The only problem you'll encounter is when you make a binary disc image, which is one continuous file.