HFS (Journaled) vs. FAT vs. NTFS

[chrismccorkle]

My girlfriend and I use different laptops- I, PowerBook; she, HP.

We're trying to come up with a way where we can share files (we live in two different houses) using my external hdd as the middle man. Obviously, she can't read the disk (HFS Journaled) without shareware.

I heard somewhere a while ago that OS X can read/write to FAT partitions as can Windows XP.

Have any of you ever done this? What do you think? I would still like the drive to be perusable with Spotlight, but if it can't be, it's no problem.

What are your thoughts?

 

[yellow]

You only have 2 choices:

FAT32 and it's inherent limitations (Max 4GB file size).

HFS+ & MacDrive for the PC.

NTFS is not an option for your Mac.

 

[chrismccorkle]

I figured NTFS wasn't an option... and damn FAT32! We're transferring DVD images.

I guess she'll just have to get a mac. Screw MacDrive.

 

[yellow]

and damn FAT32! We're transferring DVD images.

Yup. Bad option for video editing and whatnot with large files.

Unfortunately NTFS is a Microsoft proprietary format, no full specs ever released. Sadly if they had managed to get WinFS to work for Vista, then we all could have used NTFS I bet. But it was not meant to be.

FWIW, I hear that MacDrive is a solid piece of software.