Formatting external hard drive - which format??

Discussion in 'MacBook Pro' started by ethos17, Jul 27, 2010.

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  1. ethos17, Jul 27, 2010

    ethos17 macrumors newbie

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    #1
    Hi, I just got my new Seagate 640gb external hard drive and am in the process of formatting it on my MBP. However, I am not sure which format to do? My main use for the hard drive is for transferring media files back and forth between my MBP and PC using just one partition on the drive. I already know I'm not supposed to pick 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)' because I believe that is to use it as a boot drive. So should I pick 'Mac OS Extended' or maybe 'Free Space'? Thanks.
     
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  2. spinnerlys, Jul 27, 2010

    spinnerlys Guest

    spinnerlys

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    #2
    http://guides.macrumors.com/File_systems

     
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  3. Hellhammer, Jul 27, 2010

    Hellhammer Moderator

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    #3
    MS-DOS (FAT) is the best as both, Windows and OS X can natively read and write it but it does not support individual files larger than 4GB. If you need bigger, format it to NTFS and use NTFS-3G to write it under OS X
     
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  4. Corndog5595, Jul 27, 2010

    Corndog5595 macrumors 65816

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    #4
    You have a few options:
    1. Formatting to FAT
    2. Installing NTFS-3G on your mac and formatting it to NTFS
    3. Installing NTFS-3G and formatting it to NTFS on your Windows machine.

    Free space is just unpartitioned space that no operating system can transfer files to.
     
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  5. ethos17, Jul 27, 2010

    ethos17 thread starter macrumors newbie

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    #5
    Sorry for the dumb question but which one is NTFS? For me it shows:

    Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
    Mac OS Extended
    Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled)
    Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive)
    MS-DOS (FAT)
    Free Space
     
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  6. csunflip, Jul 27, 2010

    csunflip macrumors regular

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    #6
    None....

    Better off hooking it up to a PC temporarily and formatting via windows.
     
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  7. Corndog5595, Jul 27, 2010

    Corndog5595 macrumors 65816

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    #7
    either format it to NTFS on your windows computer and then install NTFS-3G on your mac, or install NTFS-3G and then format it to NTFS on your mac.

    either way works.
     
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  8. cube, Jul 27, 2010

    cube macrumors Pentium

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    #8
    NTFS is an Microsoft tech. Are you going to trust your data to some clone implementation? Apple does not support this format themselves.

    FAT32 is often used a transfer format. It is old and the files cannot be bigger than 4 GiB each. It is very bad to use this format for large disks because it is not journaled (Windows itself does not allow formatting larger than 32GiB).

    You should use HFS+ Journaled, the same as for a boot drive. If you want to use this from Windows, you need a third-party driver.

    There's really no good cross-OS alternative.
     
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  9. Corndog5595, Jul 27, 2010

    Corndog5595 macrumors 65816

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    #9

    he needs to transfer between his mac and his windows machine.
    why in the world would you suggest HFS+?
     
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  10. Hellhammer, Jul 27, 2010

    Hellhammer Moderator

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    #10
    10.6 has support for NTFS

    Yes, if it's only Mac to Mac file transfers. Windows does not support HFS+ unless you spend 50 bucks on MacDrive which is useless.

    NTFS is fine, just install NTFS-3G
     
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  11. cube, Jul 27, 2010

    cube macrumors Pentium

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    #11
    Isn't that hidden? If it's not official, it is not to be trusted. NTFS support is not easy.
     
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  12. ethos17, Jul 27, 2010

    ethos17 thread starter macrumors newbie

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    #12
    Thanks for the help. Was able to format to NTFS on my Windows 7 machine and installed NTFS 3g on my Mac and am transferring my music files as I type this.

    By the way, is there a free alternative to the NTFS 3g from Luxera? $30 seems a bit hefty, especially considering the drive itself cost about $60.
     
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  13. Hellhammer, Jul 27, 2010

    Hellhammer Moderator

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    #13
    Read access doesn't need any hacking but write access needs a terminal hack AFAIK. NTFS-3G will add support in seconds

    There is free version of NTFS-3G
     
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