[gerG]

I am starting to delve into the PC as source world. For me the best HD based player is a laptop. Problem is that I have one of each flavor. I want to get a large outboard firewire HD, but I don't know the best format to use. I only have OS10.2 on the Mac, and it will not recognize NTFS. It will read a basic MS-DOS formatting, but I do not know the drawbacks/risks of using an old format like that. So my questions:

What format would be the best choice and why?

Does OS 10.3 read NTFS? I hate to buy OSX yet a third time, but this (plus getting the AE to actually work with the Apple computer) might make it worthwhile.

Good 3rd party options? I am aware of xplay for the Windows side. Something like dosmounter or a variant of Dave for the Mac maybe?

Thanks for the help.


gerG

 

[KevC]

OSX is unix based. Pick up Gentoo and be happy

 

[S_Dedalus]

Will it read fat32?

 

[blessingx]

I have a XP laptop and an OS X desktop and for awhile I used an external firewire/usb drive partitioned as FAT32. It may be easier with PartitionMagic to reformat your Windoze machine to FAT32 (which both can read).*

BTW, according to this page, 10.3 has read-only NTFS capabilities. Looks like FAT32 is the best for cross OS X/Windows sharing.


[size=xx-small]* Then again with some very large files I did have some problems so eventually switched over to doing everything in HFS+ off the Mac and using iTunes sharing for playing music off the PC.[/size]

 

[Stephonovich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by KevC OSX is unix based. Pick up Gentoo and be happy

Indeed. Linux reads and writes to anything. 2.6 kernel has stable NTFS write support, even. I always hated the fact that stuff downloaded in Linux couldn't be read by Windows until I booted back into Linux and moved the files into a shared partition that was FAT32 or NTFS.

 

[gerG]

blessingx, what version of OSX were you using with FAT32? My version of 10.2 will not recognize a drive with that format.

I should point out that I am not looking to set up a network drive, just a portable drive that I can load up with lossless files and use as a storage bank with a variety of computers. The Ti-book is very likely the last Mac that I will ever own, so I am just trying to find some use for it, and it makes a pretty good music server. Future machines will be Windows, so going forward I don't want to compromise the drive format for the sake of the old machine, especially if I am going to have many hundred CDs on it.

Thanks for the info guys.


gerG

 

[blessingx]

gerG, I believe OS X has always been FAT32 compatible. I was using 10.3, but a quick web search looks like at least back to 10.1 it's been there.

You may want to run around MacWindows (site all about integration) and see if anything else turns up.

I'm in the same boat (with occasional compatibility issues), but my solution is the opposite, I hope to be done with Windows (even while back to making a living doing MS ASP code

).

 

[KyPeN]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stephonovich Indeed. Linux reads and writes to anything. 2.6 kernel has stable NTFS write support, even. I always hated the fact that stuff downloaded in Linux couldn't be read by Windows until I booted back into Linux and moved the files into a shared partition that was FAT32 or NTFS.

I'm not 100% sure about that. IIRC, in its current state, Linux has full read support of NTFS and can write to NTFS if and only if you are writing over a file with the exact same about of bits (i.e. I write over a 300 character .doc with another 300 character .doc, not 299 and not 301).

You may want to do some research on this subject before just jumping into it because you could very easily corrupt your NTFS partition if done wrong.

 

[C38368]

Quote:

Originally Posted by KyPeN I'm not 100% sure about that. IIRC, in its current state, Linux has full read support of NTFS and can write to NTFS if and only if you are writing over a file with the exact same about of bits (i.e. I write over a 300 character .doc with another 300 character .doc, not 299 and not 301). You may want to do some research on this subject before just jumping into it because you could very easily corrupt your NTFS partition if done wrong.

Kernel 2.6 does in fact support NTFS writing. However, it's not yet been perfected, and as such I'm not aware of any distros which come with the necessary module to do so. It's easy enough to acquire and install however, and seems to be as reliable as not. But I still wouldn't want to use it on an NTFS partition with critical data just yet without backing it all up first.

Either way, the safest and most realiable means would probably be a shared FAT32 drive.

 

[Stephonovich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by KyPeN I'm not 100% sure about that. IIRC, in its current state, Linux has full read support of NTFS and can write to NTFS if and only if you are writing over a file with the exact same about of bits (i.e. I write over a 300 character .doc with another 300 character .doc, not 299 and not 301). You may want to do some research on this subject before just jumping into it because you could very easily corrupt your NTFS partition if done wrong.

Aye... I was thinking about captiventfs, which uses native Windows .dlls. A crude hack, and reliant on M$, but it works.

Alternatively, I found a nifty project called ext2fsd on Sourceforge. Gives Windows RW support for ext2 partitions. Of course, it's a bit outdated now that ext3 and ReiserFS are the preferred filesystems for the 2.6 kernel, but it's something, anyway.

 

[Nospam]

I've been formating all my Firewire drives as Mac-native and using MacDrive on my PC.

http://www.macdrive.com/products/mac.../freetrial.asp

Haven't had any problems in over a year (except for the virus and spyware hassles on the PC side

).

 

[mlchang]

I use an outboard firewire/USB2.0 drive as my main repository of music.
I have a Powerbook G4 with OS 10.3.6 and a homebrew PC.

My external drive is formatted in FAT32 format and I can read/write with both the Mac and the PC without issues in USB2.0 mode. As far as I have read, OS X has supported read/write of FAT32 formatting since the beginning. In fact using the disk utility you can format a drive to FAT32 (MS-DOS in the disk utility) and it will work with PCs.

10.3.6 made my Mac not recognize the firewire bridge, but that's another issue.