External HDD read/write for both Mac/PC

JMEaT · Post by **JMEaT** » Tue Oct 28, 2008 7:55 am

OK.. I have an external LaCie 160GB USB HDD. I'd like to format it to work with both XP/Vista and Mac OSX (10.5).

I've tried doing the command line to format the drive to FAT32 but no matter the size of the partition (I've tried less than 137GB) it fails saying the volume is too large for fat32.

Any ideas how I can make this external play nice with both Mac and PC (read/write).

Thanks!

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Tue Oct 28, 2008 9:40 am

Windows 2000 and higher will not allow you to format a FAT32 partition larger than 32 GB.

Probably the best option would be this or something like it: http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/

BUBBALOU · Post by **BUBBALOU** » Wed Oct 29, 2008 9:41 pm

NTFS

TransMac or *Macplay* for your M$ pc's

BTW

A Mac will read a NTFS drive.......

or Put Parallels or VMWare on your MAC and use windows in a shell on your mac

I have used them all

you can also place DMG's in the root of the 1394 drive and use it as a backup boot drive for your mac too

JMEaT · Post by **JMEaT** » Thu Oct 30, 2008 9:25 am

Yes I have no problems reading the data, it is the copying files to the external NTFS that snags me up on the Mac.

I do have Parallels with an XP Pro VM on it. I had not throught about that... problem is the Virtual Environment is what I am trying to copy to external... lol

Thanks for the ideas guys.

fliptw · Post by **fliptw** » Thu Oct 30, 2008 7:34 pm

mkfs.vfat won't care about XP's size limits.g

JMEaT · Post by **JMEaT** » Wed Nov 05, 2008 4:39 pm

Is that a linux format?