Partitioning External Drive for Mac and Windows

[aznxternityd]

Hi guys, I just bought a external hard drive and would like to know how to partition the drive so I can use it on both my Windows and Mac.

 

[G-Com]

Hi guys, I just bought a external hard drive and would like to know how to partition the drive so I can use it on both my Windows and Mac.

Disk Utility can do it for OS X. As far as Windows... Boot Camp maybe?

 

[fhall1]

Use OS X Disk Utility to make it one big FAT partition...both OS X and Windows will be able to read/write to it.

 

[vinnyemmery]

as long as the files are no bigger than 4gb thats the max that fat32 can hold,i have just got a 1tb my book studio and was thinking maybe making 2 500gb partitions 1 for osx and 1 for windows nfts as im running vista 64bit in bootcamp and want to play games from the windows ext hard drive partition (hopefully)

 

[Jozone]

Options include:
-Half HFS/Half FAT32 (would address 4gb file limits on Mac Side) -- cross compatibility with the FAT32
-All HFS (use MacDrive for Windows to access HFS Volumes -- $$)
-All NTFS (use http://www.ntfs-3g.org/ to gain write access in OS X -- I've never tried it, but apparently its been stable for the last year)

 

[Sesshi]

NTFS is arguably the most useful in a cross-platform scenario, but even Paragon is not exactly fast (at least not to me, but it's what I buy for my Macs which have the possibility of Windows external storage swappage). Still, worth considering.