Sunday, September 05, 2004

Sharing a drive between Mac and PC. Sigh.

File Systems Overview
In theory, FAT32 volumes can be about 8 terabytes; however, the maximum FAT32 volume size that Windows XP Professional can format is 32 GB. Therefore, you must use NTFS to format volumes larger than 32 GB. However, Windows XP Professional can read and write to larger FAT32 volumes formatted by other operating systems.
Arghh.

I bought a 200 GB Maxtor for $100 and a firewire/usb enclose for $50. Handy way to move data around, extend my iBook, etc. (Enclosure is crummy, I'll buy a better one later.)

I figured I'd format the beast as FAT32, which both XP and Mac can read and write, and store my Mac data on OS X disk images (which I love).

Except XP/2K can't format FAT32 beyond a measly 32GB.

And OS X can't write to NTFS formatted drives. There's a way to create large FAT32 formatted drives using OS X, but there's a further limitation. FAT32 formatted drives are limited to 4GB files -- so a large image won't work.

Microsoft is really pushing to move to NTFS. Great file system, but it's totally closed. Hmm. Coincidence?

I wonder if XP can read NFS formatted drives?

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