External Hard Drive For Music

[Pooky]

I want to put music on an external drive for use on my Macbook, but it also needs to be able to be used on Windows.

What is the best format to use?

 

[ponder]

FAT32 or NTFS but you'll need ntfs-3g on the mac for it.

 

[fwwwn]

Or HFS+ and MacDrive on the Windows side.

 

[ponder]

Or HFS+ and MacDrive on the Windows side.

Thing is if he carts the thing around to mates & other people chances are 90% they will have a windows pc & not a mac so he won't be able to hook it up unless they install trial or non free driver/app on their systems which is a no no in my book.

 

[Pooky]

FAT32 or NTFS but you'll need ntfs-3g on the mac for it.

Or HFS+ and MacDrive on the Windows side.

Which is better?

 

[Synaesthesia]

Fat32 is the best. It just works. It can't work with very large files unfortunately.

IMO NTFS is the next best choice. On pc's, it just works, and Macs can read.

 

[ponder]

Which is better?

Not better but convenient/ease of use.

FAT32, has 4GB file size limitation so keep that in mind if you work with files larger than 4GB
NTFS would be the next choice, just use ntfs-3g driver on your mac.

 

[Pooky]

Okay thanks guys I'm busy formatting it to NTFS now. I might need to transport large files and don't want to be limited to 4GB.

 

[legal-tech]

Agreed. NTFS is recommended since it is more secure and does not have nasty limitations.

 

[Dett234()&&))&&65]

Partition! give more space on the PC side! works for me.

 

[greg0205]

Partition! give more space on the PC side! works for me.

What Bradcaul said... Don't think you can write to NTFS from your Mac.

 

[ponder]

Don't think you can write to NTFS from your Mac.

:erm: You mac users don't get out much
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS-3G


http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/

You can chose between the above free version or their commercial paid for version, thanks to those horrible Linux zealots.

 

[greg0205]

:erm: You mac users don't get out much
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS-3G


http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/

You can chose between the above free version or their commercial paid for version, thanks to those horrible Linux zealots.

Thanks for that... Been a loooooooong time since I switched from Windows and everything I have now is Mac formatted. Had a similar issue as the OP at the time with a Windows formatted Seagate external. Could read but not write to it. Seem to recollect it being NTFS.

 

[jasweb]

I can recommend Tuxera NTFS 3G

Use it everyday (my main work machine is a PC)

 

[Other Pineapple Smurf]

Best is to create two partitions, one very small Fat32 (say 100-200MB) and the other the remaining size with NTFS. Install the NTFS-3G installer app on the Fat32 parition. That way you can easily install the app on a Mac that does not yet have the app installed.

 

[Nuro]

Why not exfat? Windows and Mac can read/write to it.
Your only problem will be plugging it into media players.

 

[bwana]

I've got more macs than windows machines so I've been using this method to enable hfs http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/284913-Free-native-read-of-HFS-disks-in-Windows