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    Best format for OSX and bootcamp?

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by Meever, Aug 2, 2010.

  1. Meever

    Meever Notebook Evangelist

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    I've got a second hard drive in my mac and I want to have my media and documents easily accesible. What is the best format to use for this drive so writing/reading isn't a huge hassle?

    Also is there any format that OSX and Windows both uses besides fat32 that is native?

    Thanks for your help.
     
    Meever, Aug 2, 2010
    #1
  2. Sam

    Sam Notebook Virtuoso

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    FAT32 is the way to go, there's no other cross-platform compatibility! NTFS is read-only for Mac OS X, and HFS+ is completely unrecognized by Windows.
     
    Sam, Aug 3, 2010
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  3. ktbpylon

    ktbpylon Notebook Guru

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    If you don't mind spending a few more bucks, Paragon NTFS is awesome - it allows you to write to NTFS partitions.

    I have OSX on a 128GB SSD, and an additional internal 500GB Seagate divided with 200GB for Windows 7 and 300GB as a mutual shared drive, formatted in NTFS. Regardless of which OS I'm in, I can read and write to it.
     
    ktbpylon, Aug 3, 2010
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  4. Deathwinger

    Deathwinger Notebook Virtuoso

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    Fat32 is alright once you don't work with large file sizes as fat32 only has a limit of 4GB per file.

    I'd suggest NTFS as OSX ability to read and write on it with addons is a bit faster than Windows ability with addons to write and read HFS+. Plus, you can work with large file sizes.
     
    Deathwinger, Aug 3, 2010
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  5. snork

    snork Notebook Evangelist

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    I'm with Deathwinger, I'd go with NTFS. Before I removed my bootcamp partition, I used NTFS 3G (freeware) in OSX and it was a nearly transparent experience. I didn't notice any performance overhead issues, but I never transferred huge files back and forth neither (ie: >1gb).
     
    snork, Aug 3, 2010
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  6. PEEGGY

    PEEGGY Notebook Consultant

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    Use rEFIt to correct your partition table at start up.Keep in mind only 3 first partitions will be detected by WinDows. You will be able to access HFS,NTFS bidirectionally. Add Linux (if needed) at end.
     
    PEEGGY, Aug 7, 2010
    #6