External HD format

I'm about to purchase an external and was wondering what to format the HD into. Here's a quote from another thread:

I don't have a desktop and the HD will be used by my macbook most of the time. HOWEVER, it would be nice if windows could also read it, as I travel during the summer and most probably will want to attach my HD to windows-based operating systems.

So what I need is 1) an explanation of the last line of what I quoted, in English please, and 2) what do you think I should format my hard drive in? The files I'll be moving won't be any bigger than 1.5Gb. Most of them are just pictures, and some movies and video clips.

 

Go FAT32.
What the last line meant was that you could connect the HD to your Mac, and then connect a windows machine to your Mac, and thereby accessing the HD.

 

oh, i see.
But what are the benefits of HFS+/FAT32 over the other? I've heard FAT32 is an inferior file system. Is that true?

 

Yes, FAT32 is older and inferior, but it is supported by many more platforms and therefore is ideal for portable devices (USB Flash drives, portable HDs etc.)

For example, NTFS isn't fully supported by platforms such as OS X; HFS+ not by Windows, and ZFS not by either. But FAT32 can be read from and written to by OS X, Windows, UNIX, etc.

 

I see. On something like Seagate's Freeagent Pro external HD, do you think it would be possible to partition so I can have x amount of space dedicated to NTFS and y amount to HFS+?

 

Yes, you can partition a HDD to have one partition as NTFS and another as HFS+.

I believe you can install (forgot the name at the moment) a utility that lets OS X read and write to NTFS. It's available for Unix and Linux, so think OS X has it. called ntfs3g or something. Can't quite remember.

Many people who have a MBP/MB make 3 partitions, the OS X, NTFS for XP and Fat 32 for files shared between OS X and XP. But since you won't be running into the file size issue, you should be fine using Fat32.

 

k i was talking about partitioning my EXTERNAL HD, not my HDD on my macbook. That's not what you were talking about, was it?

 

It doesn't really change anything...they're still hard drives.

 

Yeah. Same thing. You can partition an ext just like internal.

 

Cool, thanks.
Now let's play the game "who can catch a n00b?"

 

Heh, no problem, sepandee . Happy to help out.

Speaking of, I just got my new (well, old, but new for my MacBook) external hard drive working. Mainly just using it for storage right now, and I'm excited to use Time Machine when Leopard comes around in October.

 

can't wait for Leopard. Wish it was October right now (well actually I don't, cuz that would been I'd have only a month left to write my thesis :'( ). It should kick vista in the ... (fill in the dots).

 

Leopard's going to be awesome . I can't wait to get my hands on it.