External Storage

gazfocus

gazfocus

gazfocus

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Liverpool
I currently use a PC for my university work (as I do an IT degree) but my preferred system is my Mac.

I'm looking for a storage solution that I can use on both my Mac and my PC. Would a Network Hard Drive be suitable?

I know you can use USB memory sticks on both Mac and PC but every time I've used an external hard drive, you either have to format it as a PC or as a Mac drive and one can't be read on the other.

Does anyone know of any solution?

Thanks for any suggestions/advice
 
Macs uses HFS+ and Windows these days uses NTFS;

Your choice is;
Use NTFS and try NTFS3G on your Mac for using that drive (via USB2 or Network) or use HFS+ and install MacDrive on your windows system to read and write the HFS+ drive.

Macs can read but not write on a NTFS drive.

Another solution is to use a formate where both can read, Fat32 - will be slow but if you're just using it as storage between them 2 system, Fat32 would be my move, unless you handle files larger than 4GB.

Hope that helps. :)
 
Dr Jones said:
Another solution is to use a formate where both can read, Fat32 - will be slow but if you're just using it as storage between them 2 system, Fat32 would be my move, unless you handle files larger than 4GB.

Hope that helps. :)
Click to expand...

Thanks for your advice. Just wondering, Isn't there a size limit as far as FAT32 goes? Reason I'm asking is because I'm looking to get something around a 500GB hard drive.

I have tried an NTFS drive on a mac and it wouldn't even read it. Have tried a HFS+ drive on Windows and got the same result.

Thanks again
 
That's weird, my NTFS reads on my Mac but not write.

Anyway, there isn't an actual limit if you use Disk Utility on OS X to create the FAT32 drive partition, just that 1 single file size larger than 4GB isn't supported.
HFS+ only can be read / write if you install MacDrive, a paid software to Windows to read Mac's filesystem.
 
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