Having ordered my MacBook Pro 15" 2.4GHz, I decided to pick up a good external harddrive with which to lug around data from my home PC to my new laptop. I settled on the purchase of a 160GB Western Digital Passport and noticed that the drive has been formated using FAT32. I've run into issues with file sizes in the past on FAT32-formatted drives, so I'm tempted to reformat the HDD to NTFS. Some quick Googling revealed that Mac OS X offers only limited support for NTFS, allowing users to read from NTFS-formatted drives; but not write to them. And now my question:

How should I format this harddrive for support in both Microsoft Windows operating systems and Mac OS X? It seems that there is a workaround that can allow Mac OS X to write to NTFS drives, but the mounting procedure is a bit more of a chore than I'd like to go through. (http://www.hackszine.com/blog/archive/2007/06/howto_readwrite_to_ntfs_drives.html) What do you guys suggest? I intend to run Mac OS X alongside Windows XP / Vista, and I have some files on my home computer that can't be squeezed onto my FAT32-formatted drive.

FAT32 does have limitations however it is officially supported and painless to use. If you're not familiar with fink or the command line, using an NTFS drive can quickly become a chore. If you have file size issues, some apps allow you to break up the files into 2GB chunks that might make life easier.

btw if you're using an external drive to transfer large files, firewire would've been a better choice. I find USB2 to be significantly slower than even firewire400, not to mention firewire 800.

Install MacFUSE with NTFS 3g (beta) to get read & write NTFS volume on Mac OS.
Install MacDrive on Windows to read & write HFS+ volume.

Honestly, ntfs-3g is very very easy to use. First you need to find the pre-complied version. It is just like any mac installation.

Go this http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/276594/+1780#

Look for post #1787 and #1789

Well, you don't have much choice here. Huge file only can store in NTFS or mac filesystem(HFS+). Maybe you can create HFS+ and in winxp or vista, get macdrive or transmac(Both are not freeware) which can enable to read/write HFS+

Perhaps it was a lousy choice to go with the USB 2.0 standard on the external harddrive, but I thought that a FW/USB2.0 combo drive was a little superfluous. Should have thought that one through better!

MacDrive seems like a solid choice, except for the fact that I'll have to install MacDrive on all Windows-platform computers that I end up using in order to read the HFS+ drive.

Thanks for the prompt responses. I'll likely go the MacFUSE + NTFS route to avoid having to unRAR large files when they need to be used in Boot Camp.

Any word about Leopard and NTFS support?

I'm yet to see that on the later build. There's still hope for the un-announced new features.

I have a Western Digital 120GB 2.5Inch Notebook HDD. I opened Disk Utility in Mac OS X and then click on the HDD (not the volume), and then click erase and select volume format as MS-DOS File System. Took me 2 minutes to get it to work with Mac OS X, Vista and XP. No drivers needed.

TechnoDude94, your external HDD has been formatted in FAT32. Try dragging a file over 4GB in size onto it, and you'll find that it won't work.

Yes, you are right in one part where you said it is formatted in FAT32 but I tried dragging 700MB files into it from Vista OS. It worked no problems. But what do you say is the limit for FAT32?

I wonder did you ever read the responce correctly.
yetieater, clearly mentioned a 4GB limit, 700Mb is no where near 4GB.

@TechnoDude94, that's why people format in NTFS, rather than fat32. You don't have much choice

Oh, okay I didn't read it properly. Hehe my bad. Now I cut the files to transfer them. Thanks anyway.

Anyway, i have d same problems as you have now last time, considering what type of format do i need to use on my external hard drive. i googled it and my final decision is use HFS+ format. Y ? cause this format is far more better than fat32 and ntfs, from my experience.
the file system is totaly different. if u wan to use the external hard disc with windows, install macdrive.
i also read that macfuse writing files to a ntfs is much slower.

I gave up deciding on which format to go with, and ended up with 2 different partitions on my external hdd, one in HFS, and another in FAT32. Only catch is I have to decide what data & files are going to be shared with Windows.

"they" say slower. But for me, it's not that "slower". I move my files (2-3Gb) iso around 5-10min i think. Don't really remember much. I know the transfer speed is similar in window. Btw, if you are using external USB hdd, the speed sure slower like hell cos' of USB bottleneck, it is slower even you're in window. But one thing i found out, it's unstable. Sometimes it hang while transfering. I have to force to quit ntfs-3g and restart my machine.