Portable HDD Formatting

Hey guys,

I have a Mac and a PC. I recently bought a 1TB portable HDD that I want to format so that it can be read/written on both platforms.

Does anyone know what I could do to solve this? I am finding no help by searching google.

The common answer is to format to FAT32 - couple of problems I have with that.
One is that last time i formatted a 1TB HDD to FAT32, it literally halved the capacity. Gunn saw it, weird as hell. So I'm a bit gun shy.
The other is that in this modern age, I feel that Bluray rips will become common, so I don't want to not be able to put them on my HDD due to the shit 4GB file size limit that FAT32 allows.


So I want to know what format works with both and how I format, to said format.

Any help is appreciated, thanks guys.

I bought a WD 1TB and formatted it with Fat32 and it works on my MacBook, win7 laptop and ps3. I didn't notice any major loss of available data...possibly faulty HDD?

Simply put , you can't Cap.. FAT32 is the only common file system between both of the OS's (that I know of)

However, there is software you can install to read NTFS (Windows file system) or HFS+ (Mac file system) on the opposing platform
e.g.
Windows : MacDrive
Mac: NTFS-3G (I use this on Linux, which is practically a Mac, and it works fantastic)

So really your best bet is install the filesystem for the OS that you most commonly use, and then install the emulator for the other OS.

If you really need complete portability (e.g. you need to take your hard drive to and from work, etc, can't install an emulator) then you could look into exFAT.. but there is probably a reason why it didn't become popular and I wouldn't trust it with 1TB worth of data, but that's just me.

Yeap, as what Superstar said, install that emulator type program on the other OS you hardly use if you REALLY need blueray Rips

FAT32 is the most common widely used format for accessories though...

PS3, USB video players etc etc

You could use FAT32, and put a portable file splitter onto your HDD, so then you split your DVD/BLUERAY to 4gb, transfer to HDD, when you want them on a PC, copy over and then merge...

Then you can use the HDD on your PS3 as well..

Thanks guys, what a bugger.

Super, does that NTFS-3G work similar to finder/explorer. Can you drag and drop between folders?

Or am I misunderstanding? It would be great if it were just a background service that allowed me to write to NTFS, without opening a program each time.

@MJ - media server man. No need for FAT32 to make it work on a media server.
Beyond that, my mac mini is plugged into the same tele as my ps3, so I just use that for media, works better.
I'M trying to avoid FAT32, because of the obvious hassles with large files.

NTFS-3G (if that's the way you are going) just runs in the background, Cap.

Think of it as just enabling write access to your NTFS hard drive from a Mac. A standard Mac will be able to read (ie. play) your files in an NTFS file system, it just can't put files onto it. That's where NTFS-3G comes in. It's basically just a service you install and forget. Any program will be able to write to the hard drive after you install NTFS-3G, including the standard explorer (as you put it).

You'll find the program here BTW, if you havn't already:
http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/

Just remember to get the NTFS-3G rather than "Tuxera NTFS" (unless your willing to pay for the "higher performance" [who knows what that even means])

P.s. I don't think Mac can format a hard drive for NTFS so you'll need to do the format on a Windows comp.