Mac OS Journaled vs. FAT 32

[cristovao]

I did a quick search and couldn't find anything specifically on this so wondering, is there a real advantage to using one or the other?

I have an internal secondary 1TB drive that holds all my data/media and am curious if formatting it to Mac OS Journaled would provide better performance or stability over formatting it FAT 32. I've read a few discussions online that have arguments for both. What do you think?

 

[spinnerlys]

FAT32 is quite old, HFS is too, but as you primarily use Mac OS X (I suppose), HFS+ is the better choice due to HFS+ being written for Mac OS.

FAT32

• Read/Write FAT32 from both native Windows and native Mac OS X.
• No individual file larger than 4GB.

NTFS

• Read/Write NTFS from native Windows.
• Read only NTFS from native Mac OS X
• To Read/Write NTFS from Leopard: Install MacFUSE and NTFS-3G. You can install both with NTFS-3G for Mac OS X.
• To Read/Write NTFS from Snow Leopard: Guide: Enable native NTFS Read/Write in Snow Leopard
• (Be aware that some are of the opinion that enabling native NTFS in SL is unstable/unreliable, and favor the MacFuse/NTFS-3G method for Snow Leopard)

HFS

• Read/Write HFS from native Mac OS X
• To Read/Write HFS from Windows, Install MacDrive
• To Read HFS (but not Write) from Windows, Install HFSExplorer

 

[Grannyville7989]

The only reason you should consider FAT32 for a file system is if you want a Windows OS to be able to read and write to it without additional software.

 

[GGJstudios]

The only reason you should consider FAT32 for a file system is if you want a Windows OS to be able to read and write to it without additional software.

Windows can read/write NTFS without additional software.

 

[Grannyville7989]

Windows can read/write NTFS without additional software.

But OS X cannot write to NTFS. Additional software would be required for it to do so.

 

[GGJstudios]

But OS X cannot write to NTFS. Additional software would be required for it to do so.

Not on the Windows side. You said:

if you want a Windows OS to be able to read and write to it without additional software.

You didn't say:

if you want a Mac OS to be able to read and write to it without additional software.

And you can enable NTFS in Mac OS X 10.6 without additional software.

 

[MisterMe]

But OS X cannot write to NTFS. Additional software would be required for it to do so.

Big effing deal. NTFS-3G is free. It allows the Mac user to read, write, format, and partition NTFS drives. Because virtually every Windows machine supports NTFS and the Mac supports NTFS with the installation of free software, there is practically no reason to format a volume as FAT32.

To be clear: MacOS X can read NTFS out-of-the-box. In MacOS X 10.6, write access to NTFS is available, but is disabled. NTFS write-access can be enabled from the Terminal command line. NTFS-3G works well with MacOS X 10.6, but it is required only for older versions of MacOS X.

 

[Grannyville7989]

I think I must have fluffed up somewhere when making my post but never mind. The original post states that he's using Mac OS anyway so formatting a drive as NTFS is out of the question, if you're using Disk Utility.

 

[GGJstudios]

I think I must have fluffed up somewhere when making my post but never mind. The original post states that he's using Mac OS anyway so formatting a drive as NTFS is out of the question, if you're using Disk Utility.

Again, that's not true. If NTFS is enabled on the Mac, Disk Utility will format drives in NTFS.

​

 

[Grannyville7989]

I never knew this was possible. How do you go about doing it?

 

[spinnerlys]

I never knew this was possible. How do you go about doing it?

If you install the NTFS-3G drivers it will work, I don't know about Paragon or the enabling of NTFS write capabilities in SL. Look at the quote from GGJstudios I used in my first post.

 

[Grannyville7989]

Ah, I thought it meant that you could have native read/write for NTFS on Snow Leopard without the need of additional third-party software.

 

[GGJstudios]

Ah, I thought it meant that you could have native read/write for NTFS on Snow Leopard without the need of additional third-party software.

Yes, you can. Read the quoted text in the second post in this thread.

 

[Grannyville7989]

Ah, I did not notice that link. I feel like a bit of a doughnut for not noticing. Thank you.

 

[cristovao]

MOSJ vs fat 32

OK, great responses and info but I guess I should've made a few things clear;

• on this G5, I'm running OS 10.5x
• I'm not concerned with using this drive on a Windows system
• Lastly and probably most important, does OS Journaled present better read/write speeds over FAT 32?

 

[GGJstudios]

OK, great responses and info but I guess I should've made a few things clear;

• on this G5, I'm running OS 10.5x
• I'm not concerned with using this drive on a Windows system
• Lastly and probably most important, does OS Journaled present better read/write speeds over FAT 32?

If you're not planning to access the drive from a Windows system, HFS is your best bet.

 

[chown33]

FAT32 is inherently limited to files less than 4 GB in size. HFS+ does not have this limitation. So if you have any files that are or will be larger than 4 GB, FAT32 is not viable.

Since you said you plan to use the drive for media, I suspect some files will be larger than 4 GB.

Read more here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table#FAT32

 

[deadwulfe]

Use HFS+. It's a journaled file system that doesn't need to be defragged and allows for files larger than 4GB. Fat32 is none of those things.

 

[cristovao]

HFS+ it is!

Thanks for all the advice and help. I ended up going with HFS+ and to give you an idea, when I originally transferred 500GB of data onto the first FAT 32 formatted 1TB driver, it took over 15 hours to copy over. Copying the same data from one HFS+ drive to another: Only 9 hours. Obvious performance boost.

 

[levroi]

FAT32 has a 4GB limit for files too

And FAT32 doesn't support files that are over 4 GB, that is a big bummer too when you work with raw video files. So better of with the Mac journaled format...

(sorry, deadwulfe & chown33 -& perhaps even more- already said this, didn't read thoroughly...)