Prepering external HDD's for my new Mac

Hi NBR.

As I earlier said, I want to try out a Mac. I'm going to order it first week of 2012, I think.

Now, my question is, I'm preparing my external drives for this swith as I was told that as the OS X were not able to write on NFTS.

This will be a huge issue for me as I do have all my data on 3x1TB WD drives.

I found some free time today, (actually not, I've just did not sleep tonight, it is about 6 AM) and got everything to 2x1TB drives, which means I have one free which I want to format and get my files back on so the Mac can read AND write on it.

So, because "It just works", I wonder what allocation unit size I should set and if it does matter at all. (?)


AND, no, I do not want any additional app to be able to write on NTFS. I want it to just work.

exFAT
(64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384 or 32768)

Any ideas?

 

Lion's Disk Utility has the ability to format a drive as exFAT. You can't set the allocation size (as far as I'm aware) but I've found it not to make a difference.

You might want to use your 3rd HDD for Time Machine to back up your system's internal drive.

 

I see. I haven't got my Mac yet. So, the best thing I can do is just leave it at defualt and do a proper format? (Not fast format)

 

You can do a full format if you want, but it's not necessary. The external hard drive I use was formatted NTFS, but once I pulled all the data off it, I simply did a quick format with 500 GB at exFAT and 500 GB as Mac OS Extended (for Time Machine). Everything copied back to the exFAT partition with no problem.

 

It is not empty. I still do have data on it, but it is either backed up or data I do not anymore need.

It is still about 700GB data in there..

 

exFAT, just like you are doing. use the default allocation size.

 

Thanks for the replies guys... REP added to both.