Correct format for external drive.

[Field]

I am about to pull my hair out except it is already falling out.

At school I use a Mac with Darwin kernal. My own computer runs Ubuntu. Everyone else runs PC.

What format do I need to choose? Ubuntu will not write to Mac's format. The Mac said it would not write to the drive, but I thought they did NTFS?

Is FAT the only thing I can use? It limits size to under 4GB which is sort of ok except sometimes I transfer video files larger...

 

[Field]

Anyone have experience with macFUSE?

 

[Field]

Maybe I should just return the drive and forget about digital copies... Our technology is so advanced jpegs and tiffs can't be swapped. Brilliant.

 

[Tikkis]

Anyone have experience with macFUSE?

I do. I use constantly PC:s and Macs side-by-side. MacFUSE is a practical way of passing the dreaded 4 GB limit in FAT and making it possible to switch disks in PC <> Mac environment.

No idea about the Linux environment though.

I would suggest that you try MacFUSE, then you'll know.


Tikkis

 

[colyn]

I use Linux and write my backup files to a NTFS formatted external drive. Linux will read and write to NTFS..

Mac should read and write to NTFS.

 

[GaryLH]

The 4g limit is due to fat16 which was popular during the time of window 3.1. Much later in time fat32 format was designed. Those 8gb SD cards use fat32. Ntfs is yet another different format.

If u have a 8 gb or bigger SD card and a USB SD card reader, this would be a quick way to check compatibility with all three operating systems.


Which version of Mac os is the school running. I thought around snow leopard, Mac os support ntfs natively without Ma fuse.. Tiger needed Ma fuse if I remember correctly.

Gary

 

[Field]

I do. I use constantly PC:s and Macs side-by-side. MacFUSE is a practical way of passing the dreaded 4 GB limit in FAT and making it possible to switch disks in PC <> Mac environment.

No idea about the Linux environment though.

I would suggest that you try MacFUSE, then you'll know.


Tikkis

Linux can read and write anything but journaled HFS. It might be slightly complicated to make it do HFS though.

I may have to talk them into installing MacFUSE on the computers at school.

I found this, and I am having trouble decided between non-journaling and NTFS now. If I go to the library they got powerful PC's with xenon processors for doing photoshop and printing from Epson 9900. I am not big on photoshop but the computers are soooooooooo much faster than the Mac's we got. I am not sure I could talk the library into install HFS explorer.

This is all stupid.

 

[Field]

The 4g limit is due to fat16 which was popular during the time of window 3.1. Much later in time fat32 format was designed. Those 8gb SD cards use fat32. Ntfs is yet another different format.

If u have a 8 gb or bigger SD card and a USB SD card reader, this would be a quick way to check compatibility with all three operating systems.


Which version of Mac os is the school running. I thought around snow leopard, Mac os support ntfs natively without Ma fuse.. Tiger needed Ma fuse if I remember correctly.

Gary

I would have to check. The Kernal was Darwin. The version was 10 something, maybe with a 5 in it. I looked for the words Snow Leopard but did not see them (or know where to look).

 

[GaryLH]

Top left corner of screen, the apple icon, mouse click and click the item in the menu pull down which says something like "about this Mac"

10.6.x is snow leopard
10.5.x is leopard
10.4.x is tiger
10.3.x is panther

Where is the upgrade version within that release. 10.6.8 is latest for snow leopard. Lion is 10.7.x

Gary

 

[GaryLH]

Forgot to mention the Darwin kernel was an actual release back to open source that Apple did a long time ago sometime after the first os 10 release and was the basis of the original Mac 10 OS release. A pure unix basic os.

Gary

 

[GaryLH]

Apple (next start up bought by apple) based the user interface that we use in the Mac os on this kernel

 

[ampguy]

I have Paragon's NTFS for Mac installed for local NTFS drives, but mostly just use NAS storage for moving/sharing. I'm still on 10.6.6 snow leopard.

 

[rxmd]

Anyone have experience with macFUSE?

Yes, good experience too.

I'd probably format it as NTFS, install NTFS-3G via MacFUSE on the Mac and you get a universal drive for those cases where you might exchange files with someone on Windows.

(Without NTFS-3G the Mac will only read NTFS, not write to it. The newest versions of MacOS have experimental write support, too, but I wouldn't rely on that. NTFS-3G is tried and tested.)

 

[Field]

MacFuse and NTFS-3G are working great!