Ext HD - Mac and PC compatibility

[Trevor Stone]

I currently have a PC and plan to move to a Mac in the next few
months. I'd like to buy an external HD that will mainly hold video
for editing and was curious if anyone had advice/known issues about
using the HD for the PC and the MAC.

I am aware of the FAT v NTFS formatting required and am looking into a
Maxtor One Touch 4 500G drive.

I'm open to suggestions and any guidance would be appreciated.

-Trevor

 

[Eric Gisin]

FAT32 is your only choice, unless there is a UDF version supported by both XP and OSX.

FAT32 is limited to 4GB files, which limits your videos.
You need a third party util to format over 32GB as FAT32,
and a 500GB volume will be slow for some operations.

 

[Roger Blake]

FAT32 is your only choice, unless there is a UDF version supported by both XP and OSX.

How about formatting the drive for OSX and using MacDrive to access it
from Windows XP?

(See http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/ for details. Bottom
line, for $50US you can have full access to Mac filesystems from Windows.)

 

[Odie Ferrous]

How about formatting the drive for OSX and using MacDrive to access it
from Windows XP?

(See http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/ for details. Bottom
line, for $50US you can have full access to Mac filesystems from Windows.)

Excellent product - installed on all my (non WinXP64) systems.

Works almost flawlessly.

Duncan

 

[Arno Wagner]

I currently have a PC and plan to move to a Mac in the next few
months. I'd like to buy an external HD that will mainly hold video
for editing and was curious if anyone had advice/known issues about
using the HD for the PC and the MAC.

I am aware of the FAT v NTFS formatting required and am looking into a
Maxtor One Touch 4 500G drive.

I'm open to suggestions and any guidance would be appreciated.

-Trevor

Just an addition to the other excellent comments: On the hardware
side any USB2.0 external drive should work with a MAC. The only
thing you need to solve is the filesystem issue.

Side note as to the Maxtors: They run hot and have disks in them
that are sensitive to heat. Not a good choice, it seems. Gte
something with a fan.

Arno

 

[Trevor Stone]

Thanks for all the helpful comments. Looks like I'll be doing a bit
more research.

-Trevor