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I just got a maxtor 500 gb triple interface drive, and was wondering what file system to use. Ive partitioned the drive about 65-400 two partitions.

i am doing video editing with final cut and i need to be able to copy files from a pc. Should i use 'Apple partition Scheme' or 'Pc partition scheme'?

Os X extended or what?
 
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Unless you want to buy some extra software for your PC, use a PC format. Macs can not write to NTFS, so you'll have to format it to FAT-32. Windows XP/2000 can not format drives over 36Gb (IIRC) to FAT-32. Fortunately OSX's disc utility has an option for "MS-DOS File System" which happens to be FAT-32. Format it as such with your Mac and it should work fine on the PC.
 
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baggss said:
Unless you want to buy some extra software for your PC, use a PC format. Macs can not write to NTFS, so you'll have to format it to FAT-32. Windows XP/2000 can not format drives over 36Gb (IIRC) to FAT-32. Fortunately OSX's disc utility has an option for "MS-DOS File System" which happens to be FAT-32. Format it as such with your Mac and it should work fine on the PC.


You could format it to NTFS (because I know some people don't enjoy using Fat-32) and then connect to via a networked computer. (that is of course if you just so happen to have an extra computer sitting around)
 
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baggss said:
Windows XP/2000 can not format drives over 36Gb (IIRC) to FAT-32.

Could you just clarify that for me please Baggss? I am just wondering because I have formatted many a drive on a Win XP machine 300GB and below when building machines - some with 3 or 4 partitions?

The actual partition table on Windows cannot go past 32GB (that contains all the different partition information), but the actual drive can be formatted as big as you want.

I am asking because you may mean something else as I am not sure what you mean by IIRC (you may mean the actual partition table - not sure.)
 
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BEEEsH said:
You could format it to NTFS (because I know some people don't enjoy using Fat-32) and then connect to via a networked computer. (that is of course if you just so happen to have an extra computer sitting around)
Good suggestion, but he's doing Final Cut work with it... I wouldn't want to edit a film on a drive hooked up via ethernet...;)
 
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Kyomii said:
Could you just clarify that for me please Baggss? I am just wondering because I have formatted many a drive on a Win XP machine 300GB and below when building machines - some with 3 or 4 partitions?

The actual partition table on Windows cannot go past 32GB (that contains all the different partition information), but the actual drive can be formatted as big as you want.

I am asking because you may mean something else as I am not sure what you mean by IIRC (you may mean the actual partition table - not sure.)

I posted a link to the MS Help database in another thread. It said that you could not format partitions bigger than 32Gb with WinXP so for bigger drives you would have to use multiple partitions. Guess i was unclear about that above.

I do know that if you use OSX's disc utility you can format the whole drive as FAT-32 and it will work with XP.
 
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because your using it for FCP do it in HFS (apple journaled)

forget what inferior machines can read ;)
 
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baggss said:
I posted a link to the MS Help database in another thread. It said that you could not format partitions bigger than 32Gb with WinXP so for bigger drives you would have to use multiple partitions. Guess i was unclear about that above.

I do know that if you use OSX's disc utility you can format the whole drive as FAT-32 and it will work with XP.

I think it would probably mean that the actual partition table (that holds the parition information such as the Master File Table) cannot go above 32GB - which is not the same as formating a 300GB drive for example - basically you can format any size drive in Win XP (I have done 100's)

It used to be the case years ago that some BIOS's were limited to 32GB and would not see any drives above 32GB - but those days have long gone now.

Think about it, if it were true that you could not format any higher than 32GB, everyone with a WinXP machine would have many 32GB partitions to deal with since hard drives are now huge, which is simply not the case ;)

So, for the purpose of the OP, you can format the external drive in FAT32/NTFS no matter what size - you may be limited by the amount of primary paritions you can have (I would recommend no more than four), but you can have as many non-primary, or logical, partitions as you like.

Off to find your link :) Thanks for replying BTW.
 
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Ok, there seems to be confusion here...
WinXP and Win 2k don't have a size limit for formatting a disk, as long as it is formatted as NTFS (which is the standard for XP/2k).

If you want however to format a disk, or partition, in FAT32 format, XP/2k is limited to 32GB. This limit has nothing to do with the BIOS, but is a limit in XP/2k. The same disk on the same PC can easily formatted FAT32 above 32GB with Win98 or ME. This is true for internal as well as external disks. Mac OS X interestingly is able to format FAT32 without the 32GB limit, just like the old Win98. Call it a bug, or whatever, but it's a fact. I was admin for many Windows machines, not too long ago, so this is first hand experience, not something I've read somewhere.

Now to come back to the original post, if you want to be able to read and write from both PC and Mac, you only have two choices: FAT32 or via network.
But this has following inconveniences:
- Network is too slow for Final Cut, except if you have an 1Gbit setup.
- FAT32 has a file size limit of 2GB, means files bigger than 2GB can't be used with a FAT32 disk.

Final Cut files are huge, and can easily exceed 2GB.
 
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Thanks dtravis7, that is the same one I think I posted in the other thread.
 
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Thankyou for the clarification, although I am unsure how I have managed to format at least 50 hand built WinXP machines with hard drives ranging from 40GB right up to 300GB in FAT 32 without any problems......I am now totally confused by the Microsoft statement.

EDIT: I know why now, because I use my own parition manager - not the inbuilt XP one ;)

Thankyou now for clarifying that - I really appreciate it because I never knew XP fdisk tool was restricted to push people to NTFS, which I think is better than FAT 32, but many here prefer the old way of doing things :)

And thanks to Baggss for first mentioning it too! :)
 
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Kyomii said:
Thankyou now for clarifying that - I really appreciate it because I never knew XP fdisk tool was restricted to push people to NTFS, which I think is better than FAT 32, but many here prefer the old way of doing things :)

And thanks to Baggss for first mentioning it too! :)

Many people here would prefer FAT-32 since OSX can read and write to it, unlike NTFS which OSX can only read.

Your welcome. :)
 
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Do you need to capture and run multiple streams off of this drive on a PC, or just from FCP? If you just need to read and acceess the files on the drive, use HFS and buy Mac Drive for the PC. Mac Drive will allow the PC to use it just like any other drive. However, I wouldn't use it as a server for media if you were swappping the drive between a Mac Avid system and a PC Avid system. I don't think it's as fast as if it were using a native file system.
 

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