Hi mac sifus and pros.

You see, I was using a NTFS formatted drive on Snow Leopard but it can only read and not write so I've installed NTFS-3G and NTFS file format is readable and writable in Snow Leopard.
The problem is, My External HDD tends to die(corrupt or what so ever) with no reasons(not any reasons that I know of). A 320GB Samsung Portable S2 and a 500GB Seagate Replica was killed just like that. Maybe it is the cause of the 3rd party software(NTFS-3G) that I use.

I DID NOT remove the HDD WITHOUT ejecting it first on MAC and safely remove it from Windows.

So now I wanna know if there are any format for my external HDD to be used and compatible in both Mac and Windows(if possible, no 3rd party software needed). As far as I know, FAT32 is readable and writable on both Mac and Windows but it cannot hold any files larger than 4GB(Im storing lots of HD movies which are more than 10GB per file).

Pls share your experience if possible.

Very heartache and angry now . Tons and Tons of HD Anime and Movies, Songs and nice Pictures which took years and a huge amount of bandwidth to download are just wiped out like that.

and sorry if there are any posts about the same topic before this. I just lost all my mood to search for it anymore.

More information:

I am using bootcamp windows 7 on my macbook. It reads and writes HFS file system maybe because of the bootcamp utility installed into my windows 7. The question is, can other windows 7 or other series read and write HFS file system? If yes then I have found my answer.

*Edit*

After some thinking and an idea from someone, I figured out that I could use Parallel desktop and install a copy of windows into my Mac OS to enable it to read NTFS file system without having to reboot into bootcamp. This way I don't have to use any 3rd party software for my Mac OS to read NTFS file system too but by using this method, the process doubled, dint it? Because when I plug in my external HDD as a device for my Parallel desktop and then from my parallel desktop I access my shared folder from my Mac OS and copy the files into the External HDD again.

Short to say: Parallel Desktop(access files)>Mac OS(grant permission to write)>Parallel Desktop(read and write files from Mac HDD)>External HDD
rather than Mac OS(By using 3rd Party Software/Read and Write Files)>External HDD

Is this method a good one or a bad one?

This post has been edited by Vince1991: Dec 16 2010, 06:40 PM

Latest Update.. The Seagate Replica is dead for good. Its only 15days old.

I've only used it to store and watch movies using Mac OS.

I have no choice but to use NTFS because I have to transfer files vice versa from mac and windows.

If I were to use HFS, then I would need to use a 3rd party software in Windows which could end up just like my case here.

Btw, Using NTFS-3G I often get 25-27mb/s copy rate.

Sigh, I have 2 dead hard disk and over 800GBs of data lost in not more than 30 days time. All this happened suddenly with no warning. Damn~

Thanks for the replies though

Just sent my Replica for warranty at Summit USJ.. Hopefully they'll send me a replacement soon and trust me, its not the warranty is the problem, its the data lost inside.

I think I'll use HFS file system. Rather than stressing my hardware over the parallel desktop method. Im gonna get another HDD for sharing files with other Windows user. As for the Replica, I'll use it as a stationary Ext HDD only for MAC OS. Lol.. dont want any trouble with my HDD dying on me anymore.

Lucky you dude~!

In my case, Disk Utility in Mac OS wont do anything so I went and reformat it in a Windows PC to NTFS again. For some reasons, Windows was unable to complete the task. Used SeaTools to run diagnosis and result show that my drive was bad.

I have no idea about how and what happened. All I can say is it might be the cause of the 3rd party software I used in Mac OS to enable NTFS file write. In less than 30 days interval, 2 of my external HDD died.

Network transfer I've tried before. Quite safe but slow as snail lol..
Thanks for the heads up though..

I've decided to use 2 ext HDD. 1 as a stationary storage only for my mac. One as NTFS for transferring files from a Windows PC.

well.. as long as you have your file sharing enabled and are connected under the same network it should be fine..

Wireless network harddrive i dont know.. never had one of those.

---

Added on December 22, 2010, 12:46 pmJust got my Seagate HDD back from Seagate Singapore today~!

Warranty service is extremely fast and is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED to all~

Cheers

This post has been edited by Vince1991: Dec 22 2010, 12:46 PM