Best Way to Format Extern HD

[tock172]

I have an external hard drive that I want to use on both my macbook pro, and my PC. I need to be able to store some pretty large files on the drive, so I can't have restrictions on file size.

What is the best format to use?

I have macfuse and NTFS 3G installed.

 

[EndlessMac]

If you have enabled your Mac to read and write to NTFS then I believe your best solution is to format the external HD on your Windows computer to NTFS. It's a lot easier for your Mac to read/write NTFS than it is the other way around.

 

[Slydude]

I think Endless is right.There is a procedure out there to format an external drive so that it has both NTFS and HFS+ partitions on the same drive but I think the NTFS only drive is a much cleaner option.

 

[tock172]

I've actually decided to start using ExFat. The newest update to OS X, 10.6.5 just added support for ExFat on 11/10/2010, and Windows Vista/7 have native support for it.

 

[chscag]

Good choice. The Extended File Allocation Table format supports very large files and since SL 10.6.5 can read and write to it, you should be OK.

Take note though, that neither Vista nor Win 7 can be run on a drive formatted to the ExFAT file system although they can read/write to it.