Which file system to use for external drives?

What the topic header says basically.

Got my 500gb external drive finally, which I intend to partition soon (once I figure out how to do that in OSX10.5 under the Disk Manager), but I'm unsure of any problems that may perk up with regards to the file systems.

Leopard wants to format it with HFS+, and WinXP will want to use NTFS. Will I encounter any future problems if I just make it FAT32 so both OSs can read/write to it?
(it'll just be media/homework storage for the most part, so the 4gb limitation on FAT32 isn't an issue)

You're allowed to partition a sector under a file system iirc, so I plan to set aside 160gb for an NTFS format to make a backup of my main PC, and keep the rest in FAT32. Shouldn't really be a problem here?

[EDIT] Seems I'll have to parition it under WinXP (and figure out how to do that also without requiring my WinXP disc) since OSX apparently can't format to a drive to NTFS.

I'd personally use Fat32.. One which is binable!!!

One that has Section 5 public disorder!!!

I knoiw....I AM THE LAW!!!!!!

Or summit

Dabz

afaik all external hard drives are preformatted to fat32
my 160gb ipod and 300gb usb drive are


im assuming this isnt the phsyical/partition drive size limit cos my fat32 drives are single partition but perhaps the maximum a single file can be? (which might explain why most of my dvd's have 3 or more files)

ok you loose out on whatever performance enhanced wotnots ntfs and mac os can give your drive but you then loose out by not being able to communicate with both os's (afaik) fat32 is fine for most people who dont really give a monkeys about such things and just want an external hard drive to store their data on (especially when they send the pc away to be fixed ... no need for the tech support to see your porn collection, which is how gary glitter got exposed in the first place)

and a funny thing (funny odd not funny ha ha) in a dream this morning i started a convo about hard drives and clusters etc with the gary glitter analogy and ended with
"so each cluster is a pint glass, but if you put a shot of JD in it it will only ever hold a shot of JD till you drink (ie delete) it"
"what if its more than one shot?"
"what if its a whole pint?"
"then we drink a whole pint!"
"yay for JD"

Mine was pre-formatted in NTFS initially, and I'm assuming that's because it has backup-software included which most customers would be Windows users only for the most part.

For the 4gb thing, that's a file-size limitation for FAT32, not disk-space size.

Anyways, now off to figure out how to tackle formatting/partitioning the thing.
(will probably do both in FAT32 on Leopard, then have WinXP reformat the smaller partition as NTFS)

id keep it all fat32 myself, ok ive not delved deep enough into xp to know why i should use ntfs (aside from larger than 4gb files) as long as fat32 can see the whole drive fine and dandy im quite happy

ok there is the size of the cluster issue which im assuming ntfs is more efficiant on (the old shot in a pint glass analogy) but when its 500gb will you miss the odd mb here and there (considering i 'lost' about 20gb from retail mb and computer mb)

I think ntfs is better if your computer crashes or you unplug the drive at the wrong time - I don't think it needs to run scandisk, or something.

Couple of issues:
1) FAT32 has a larger cluster size, so you'll waste more space (each file takes up at least one cluster, so a 0-byte file takes up 4KB on NTFS, and 32KB on FAT32. Effectively, each file size is rounded up to the nearest 4KB on NTFS, and up to the nearest 32KB on FAT32. It does add up, if you have a lot of files.

2) FAT32 does not support setting file/folder security permissions, so picking it means that the volume will essentially be a free-for-all (not necesarily a problem on a single-user system),

3) FAT32 does not support windows' built-in file/folder compression, unlike NTFS. Not really an issue, until you start running low on space.

4) Supposedly NTFS is a little more robust than FAT.

That said, you don't really have a lot of options here, since FAT32 is natively supported by both operating systems. IIRC OSX can -read- NTFS partitions, but not write to them by default. Windows has no clue about HFS+ altogether.
(Not sure if there are any libraries around that allow you to read/write to NTFS from Mac -- I know that they exist for Linux. I can read and write to all my NTFS partitions from Fedora)

- I don't know about apple, but I know that for linux there are libraries around that allow you to mount a normal windows NTFS partition in read/write mode

Yeah, Mac can read NTFS no problem, but with regards to writing, you can't do much unless you install some third-party drives (like NTFS-3G), but I don't know if I want to trust myself with that route. It also would cause problems if I wanted to do stuff with the Macs at my college campus, so I guess I'm stuck with FAT32 for the mean while.

Cluster-size shouldn't be much an issue, and if it does, I can just start RAR'ing a bunch of the smaller files together into a single larger one.......I also don't see myself using more than half (250gb) on this drive in the next couple years, so I guess I'll be good on that note.

NTFS does need to do a checkdisk, but the big difference is that NTFS is a journaling filesystem while FAT is not.



Which basically means that with NTFS, the filesystem is a lot less likely to eat itself in a sudden power failure or something. An individual file may still get corrupted the same, but the filesystem as a whole is much sturdier.

As a side note, OSX creates a lot of ._DS_Store, ._myfile.txt etc. on the file system when it's not HFS+. These store meta data for the files used by Finder. This can be very annoying when using the same FAT32 drive with Mac and other OS-es.

I would say NTFS as it can be read and written to by Windows Unix and Linux (although 'nix systems dont like a dirty shutdown (one thats flagged for a chkdsk) but you can force it to mount).

Fat32 is most compatible but has a file sizelimit.