Difference in filesystems (external drives)

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Hello,

I'm a bit confused regarding the different filesystem that a HDD can be formatted in. Or, not necessarily confused about the systems in themselves, but rather what the pros and cons are. So I thought I wouldn't be alone in this.

So, a rather quickly put together overview will follow. Since I don't have a Mac, I'm not 100% sure how it will handle them, but maybe someone else can fill in those blanks.

FAT32 (File Allocation System)
- Individual file size restricted to <4Gb
- Individual volume size restricted to 32Gb during setup, otherwise to 127.53Gb (during certain circumstances, see article below)
- Fragmentation on a FAT-disc is enormous due to the system of indexing and allocation. Thus - defragging is a chore for almost all computers. This has improved over time, but due to restrictions in the FAT32-system the safeguards can instead corrupt the disc.

Reference article:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/184006/en-us


NTFS
- Uses metafiles to index and organize data
- Supports up to 256Tb (~262.144Gb) per disc
- Read only for Mac OS X 10.3 and only
- NTFS-3G activates read/write for Mac OSX, also Paragon NTFS ($29)

HFS (Hierarchical File System)
- Predecessor to the HFS+ which Mac OS X uses since ~98
- 16-bit system, which is quite inhibitory in regards of file length and size
- The disc is limited to a 2Tb size (~2,048Gb)

HFS+
- 32-bit system
- Divides the system into sectors that are 512bytes/sector. These are then grouped into allocation blocks.
- Maximum file size is 8Eb and the maximum disc size a whooping 16Eb. Now here is where file size starts to become really abstract (to me at least).

1Eb is 100,000Pb which in turn is 10,000,000,Tb which is 100,000,000Gb (I hope my decimals are correct. :p). So the maximum file size is way more than you will need. For example, a popular analogy is that every word than every human ever uttered would fit on 5Eb. So, 8 and 16 respectively is more than is necessary.

ext3
- A Linux based file system.

In review there might be a few things to think about before you choose the file system.

- A Mac cannot natively read/write NTFS, just read.

- File size and partition size are restricted with FAT32

- A HFS+ formatted drive can be shared with a PC comp. But it must be through, say, an Airport Express or the like. Found some people who got it to work directly, but it might also be that they might not know what format the drive is in. Because, just like NTFS is a MS-dev system, HFS+ is an Apple-dev system. But as long as it is shared though an APE or the like there will be no problem for a PC to connect to the drive.

Maybe someone will be helped by it. I got some help just by typing it. :)
 
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Really nice list. Will help a lot of noobs decide.

FAT32: Parition sizes can go over 127GB or whatever. I'm not sure about how much more, but my 500Gig hard drive came in as FAT32.
- Called MS DOS file system in Disk Utility

NTFS: NTFS-3G and Paragon NTFS ($29) can enable writing on NTFS.

HFS+: File size! OMG! This is a really nice move on whoever's part. I hate file size restrictions.
 
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Really nice list. Will help a lot of noobs decide.

FAT32: Parition sizes can go over 127GB or whatever. I'm not sure about how much more, but my 500Gig hard drive came in as FAT32.
- Called MS DOS file system in Disk Utility

NTFS: NTFS-3G and Paragon NTFS ($29) can enable writing on NTFS.

HFS+: File size! OMG! This is a really nice move on whoever's part. I hate file size restrictions.

I'll edit in your changes.

Regarding FAT32, I was unclear. There is a difference between disc and volume size, aswell as what restrictions are imposed under what OS.

Slightly helpful article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/184006/en-us
(the 'slightly' is key here...)
 
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Tried finding out more on what restrictions FAT32 has for Mac. Unfortunatly I have no personal experice.

But if you want to use an external drive through Airport Extreme or (speculative) TimeCapsule the size will be restricted to 32Gb/partition or disc. This is not true for use of FAT32 in other OS or as a plug'n'play disc. But for use through the network a 32Gb limit is imposed.
 
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If it's through the airport extreme or time capsule, then I guess HFS+ makes the most sense. Since even Windows can write to HFS+ if it's on a network.
 

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