GPT or MBR for 2nd drive? (bootcamp on 1st drive)

Hi gents!

1st SSD is for OSs, both OSX and Windows 7.
2nd SSD will be shared between the 2 OSs, formatted in NTFS, for data/storage only.

So 2 questions:

1- Should I format the 2nd SSD within OS X with TUXERA built-in NTFS tool or in Windows 7?

2- Should I use MBR or GPT on it?

Cheers!

My advice is to avoid using Tuxera for anything. Too many problems with it causing corruption and loss of data. The only NTFS tool we recommend is "Paragon NTFS" which you can buy direct from Paragon Software on line for $19.95.

As far as formatting the second drive for use by both OS X and Windows, I would format it as FAT-32 or ExFat (if you need file creation larger than 4 GB) as they are R&W from both OS X and Windows. You would use the MBR scheme in that situation.

I had already done a lot of research on that matter and most people said exFat shouldn't be used in internal storage disks and worse, people shouldn't trust it with important files. Something do to with the ability (or inability in this case) to recover lost data. As I use the macbook for work, I thought that was pretty concerning.

Any opinions on that?

I tried Paragon and it wouldn't mount the NTFS drive correctly, sometimes it wouldn't properly enable writing as well. Switched to Tuxera and everything has been smooth. I might try Paragon again though.

The FAT file system is a Non Journaling file system which means that it is more susceptible to data loss and non file recovery. For business use, HFS+ or NTFS are preferred because they are both journaling file systems. As for Paragon vs Tuxera, it has been our experience that Tuxera is unreliable. I have no idea why Paragon didn't work for you as it seems to work fine for most folks. Use whatever you're comfortable with and that works for you. Just make sure you make backups of your data on a regular basis.

Humm that seems a sort of paradox. I'm choosing NTFS over exFat for more reliability but at the same time even Paragon can bring a risk do data corruption, right? Do you still think NTFS + Paragon is safer for my precious data than exFat?

And how about formatting as HFS+ and using Paragon HFS/MacDrive on windows? Advantages, disadvantages?

Paragon has software that allows the Mac to read and write to NTFS drives. I have it installed on my MacBook Pro running Mavericks. I don't need to use it a lot but when I have it works fine. Here's the link to that software.

I think there is a demo version on the right side of the page. You could try it just to make sure it works. Obviously I would try it with backups of the data first.