External Hard Drive Format PC/Mac

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Hi, all.

I have a relatively dumb question, I suppose. I have a new external hard drive, and I want to move all of my files to it for safe storage and so I can clean my PC out. But since I plan to someday have a Mac, I want these files to be able to be viewed on there as well as PC. Makes sense so far? So, my question is: will exFAT work with both? Or do I need to somehow use another format? For some reason, FAT 32 isn't on the list of available formats as far as I can see.

I went (on my PC) under Computer> Hard Disk Drives, right-clicked on the external drive, and selected "Format..". I'm on Windows 7. Please help! I'd hate if I moved all my files to the drive, and then couldn't see them or do anything with them on the Mac.

Sorry, this is probably an excessively long post, but I wanted to TRY to describe my problem...

Any and all help is greatly appreciated. Thankies! :D

-J.S.
 

chscag

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The reason FAT-32 is not on the list is because Windows 7 will not (by default) create or format a drive or partition to FAT-32 that exceeds 32 GB. Go ahead and use exFAT as it's a file system supported by OS X Lion and later versions.
 
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The reason FAT-32 is not on the list is because Windows 7 will not (by default) create or format a drive or partition to FAT-32 that exceeds 32 GB. Go ahead and use exFAT as it's a file system supported by OS X Lion and later versions.

Thank you SO much. :* I was worried that I'd have to choose one OS or another. I want to have the option of being able to view and read/write content on Windows and OS X. :) So... Windows will be able to view and recognize exFAT too, right? :Blushing:
 
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the issue you will run into is actual file size. If I am not mistaken, 2GB is the limit to the file size for FAT.

Ok, if I were to just use the 2 computers, here is what I would suggest.
> If either of the PCs are desktops, just attach the drive to it and share it out, formatting it in whichever file system is native for the computer. That way, you can connect over the network and read/write as if it were connected directly to the remote computer.
 
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the issue you will run into is actual file size. If I am not mistaken, 2GB is the limit to the file size for FAT.

Ok, if I were to just use the 2 computers, here is what I would suggest.
> If either of the PCs are desktops, just attach the drive to it and share it out, formatting it in whichever file system is native for the computer. That way, you can connect over the network and read/write as if it were connected directly to the remote computer.

4GB is the max file size for Fat32.
 
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chscag

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No, exFAT is not limited to 2 GB or 4 GB. There is no practical limit to file size when using exFAT, and yes, both Windows 7 and Mac OS X can read and write to that format.

(Microsoft lists exFAT file size limit as 16 EB)
 

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