Mac & PC friendly External HDD: What are my options?

T

thendis

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I have an External HDD that is formatted using Mac OS Extended, which my PC won't read. I would love to be able to use it on both, because I often do huge transfers between them and have to use DVDs to do so. Is there a way I can allow it to be read on both (perhaps an application for Windows XP I am unaware of?)

Of couse, I could format the dirve in Disk Utility to something Windows can read, but that would be FAT32, right? which blows.

What is the best option? Does a Windows-formatted drive (either NTFS or FAT32) run slower on a Mac than one that uses Mac OS format?

thanks for the advice :)
 
You're right on both accounts:

1) You need FAT32 to be able to use it cross-platform, but this will still bring up quirks due to the fact that Mac OS X lets you name files with characters that are illegal on Windows, which can cause problems.

2) FAT32 will be slightly slower than a Macintosh-native format, such as HFS+. Exactly how slow is "too slow" is subjective, though.
 
Keep the drive formatted the way it is and use MacDrive (mediafour.com), or the equiavlent, on the PC. The main reason you don't want FAT 32 is that it won't allow you to copy files of 4 GB or more.
 
thanks guys, that was great help.

Looks like the best option is MacDrive, downloading trial version now. Never knew of it before, but sounds like exactly what I need.

And thanks Ghost for the info about >4GB files on FAT32, seeing as I would mostly be transferring very large DV files for video editing (so that would certainly have been an issue).

thanks again.
 
You are very welcome. Happy MacDriving. I find the program to be excellent and obviously highly useful.
 
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