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Formatting for multiple OS - NTFS(3g) vs FAT

neut

neut

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Nov 27, 2001
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here (for now)
Anyone use NTFS-3g?

I'm about to test it out as an alternative to FAT for multi-OS usage. Primarily external drive use for back-ups and transfer drives. I'll post a usage review. As if now I've had issues with FAT corrupting files or files playing the disappearing act when written by one OS and (not) read by the other.

Open Source (NTFS-3g):
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/24481/ntfs-3g
 
I use NTFS-3G and there are no issues that I know of. I only use it on a removable hard drive with large virtual machine files (>4GB) that FAT32 cannot handle, but still must be read on a PC.

If you don't want to use NTFS-3G and you have a NAS or media streamer box (such as the Western Digital TV HD Live), you can mount a USB hard drive using that box and let it do the conversion between SMB (Windows networking protocol) and NTFS. No drivers required!
 
neut said:
Anyone use NTFS-3g?

I'm about to test it out as an alternative to FAT for multi-OS usage. Primarily external drive use for back-ups and transfer drives. I'll post a usage review. As if now I've had issues with FAT corrupting files or files playing the disappearing act when written by one OS and (not) read by the other.

Open Source (NTFS-3g):
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/24481/ntfs-3g
Click to expand...
First off, FAT is a file system. NTFS-3G is a file system driver; the file system is NTFS. It is the difference between the Rolls and James.

With that out of the way, there is little reason for anyone to use FAT now. NTFS is acknowledged almost universally to be superior to FAT. Virtually every PC in use today can read NTFS. If you have the authority to install NTFS-3G on your Mac, then you may swap NTFS volumes between your Mac and PCs. Can you name an advantage of FAT over NTFS? I can't.
 
MisterMe said:
Can you name an advantage of FAT over NTFS? I can't.
Click to expand...

Performance

Other than the potential performance hit I may have found a new friend in NTFS. Thanks for the input guys. I'll be trying this out over the next few and see if it's usable… this will be very nice for video transfer with our production house if the performance hit isn't noticeable. FATs 4GB limit kills me when I have to deal with our PC brethren.

There's an optional optimization for USB so I may just make the PC guys happy and make some usable drives out of the format war that these external drives around here see.

+1 Open Source
 
neut said:
Performance

...
Click to expand...
Your link has nothing to do with FAT. Tuxera produces both the freeware NTFS-3G and the commercial Tuxera NTFS drivers. The commercial driver has substantially better performance than the free driver. The third filesystem measured, ext3, is a journaled filesystem for Linux systems.

The question remains: Can you name an advantage of FAT over NTFS?
 
Depending on your device and usage, you can also use exFAT, which is supported in both OS.

You can also go Ext, but you'd need a driver for both systems, unless you already have a linux box. Paragon's Ext drive is decent.

Paragon makes good drivers, I'd recommend them, even for NTFS. Their R/W speeds blast NTFS-3G/Tuxera (free and commercial) out of the water.

There's also MacDrive for reading HFS+ under Windows.

There's lots of options.
 
Last edited:
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.
  • 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)
  • Maximum file size: 16 EiB
  • Maximum volume size: 64 ZiB
 
Last edited:
GGJstudios said:
List...]
Click to expand...

A couple of notes, however...

-ExFAT can be used on anything running 10.6.5+
-Ext3 is also an excellent choice for a FS, Paragon offers Ext1-3 support for OSX
-Paragon NTFS > Tuxera > NTFS-3G > SL disabled driver
-Never use SL's NTFS driver. Ever. NTFS-3G is horrendously slow, but is far more stable than SL's driver.
-FAT has too many limitations, don't use this either.
-MacDrive works well under Windows for reading/writing to HFS+
 
darkplanets said:
A couple of notes, however...

-ExFAT can be used on anything running 10.6.5+
...
Click to expand...
Hopefully, it does register with you that there are currently zero (0) computers in the MacOS X installed based that run anything higher than MacOS X 10.6.5? I deliberately ignore the developers running pre-release versions of MacOS X 10.6.6 and higher.
 
MisterMe said:
Hopefully, it does register with you that there are currently zero (0) computers in the MacOS X installed based that run anything higher than MacOS X 10.6.5? I deliberately ignore the developers running pre-release versions of MacOS X 10.6.6 and higher.
Click to expand...
That's 10.6.5 or higher. exFAT support was introduced with 10.6.5 (some models had it in 10.6.4).
 
Last edited:
MisterMe said:
Hopefully, it does register with you that there are currently zero (0) computers in the MacOS X installed based that run anything higher than MacOS X 10.6.5? I deliberately ignore the developers running pre-release versions of MacOS X 10.6.6 and higher.
Click to expand...

Sorry if my syntax was confusing...
GGJ got it right, its 10.6.5 (and higher = +) :D

GGJ, while I do I agree there's limitations for ext3, those listed barely come into play with most people's usage (save for the fragmentation). Of course I'd really rather just have ZFS... but we know that's not going to happen.
 
Holy geeks Batman!

THX for all the info guys. My speed reference was to using a natively supported file format VS an open source extension. MisterMe can continue to feel awesome. :)

I've been to bust to install this but hopefully will be doing so tomorrow. Cleaning up a video production machine and need the external room to juggle a couple terabytes on cross-platform shared (external) drives.
_

..V, (^_^)
 
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