File system worries??

[0098386]

my PB arrived today, thankfully so did my HD enclosure. im currently backing up my windows laptop's HD but i just found it, the HD in the enclosure is NTFS. im just slighty (understatement) worried that this wont work with OSX making this big backup a waste of time?

so the question; is the NTFS file system compatible with OSX?

 

[Blue Velvet]

I'm pretty sure that OS X can only read from NTFS...

 

[musicpyrite]

Macs can read FAT32 and write to FAT32, they can read NTFS but not to write to it.

Windows cannot read HFS+ with out some kind of third party application.

I hope Tiger introduces support for writing to NTFS..... it really makes me mad sometimes that OS X doesn't support it.

 

[stevep]

OS X can read but not write to an NTFS formmated disc, (Win can read and write to NTFS of course).
OS X can read and write to a FAT 32 disc, so can windows.
OS X normally uses the Mac OS Extended (Journalled) file system which I think is also called HFS+. Windows can't read or write to this file system.

So if you want full compatibility use FAT 32.

But (there always is one...) you can't format a FAT 32 disc larger than 32gB. So if you want, say, a big firewire drive to use with Mac and Win machines you have to partition the drive.
And you can't have different partitions with different file system formats.....

 

[edesignuk]

But (there always is one...) you can't format a FAT 32 disc larger than 32gB. So if you want, say, a big firewire drive to use with Mac and Win machines you have to partition the drive.
And you can't have different partitions with different file system formats.....

FAT32 can support drives up to 2TB, but Windows won't help you do it. They want you to use NTFS (which is better of course), but still...

 

[jeremy.king]

But (there always is one...) you can't format a FAT 32 disc larger than 32gB

This is false.

You CAN format FAT32 larger than 32 GB with either OS X or linux using fdisk. The theoretical maximum size of the partition (although not recommended) is over 2 TB.

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20040724110933265

HOWEVER, the file size limitation is 4GB on any FAT32 volume, so if you have movie images or large software downloads, you are SOL.

Edit: eD beat me to it, but I left it anyways.

 

[0098386]

cheers guys, yea the NTFS file system is totally readable but I couldnt write to it, now i know why!

thanks!