OT: drive format for PC compatibility

[Chris Borjis]

ms-dos will get dual compatability with files up to 4gb each.

the alternative is to format it mac and get a pc utility for reading mac volumes.

[Aaron Neitz]

Thanks Chris.

4GB is still a pretty low amount. Are PC users stuck to that limit or do they have some other fancy format?

[Jeff Carpenter]

To elaborate, here are the 3 main choices:

1)
HFS+ (Mac OS Standard Format) = Normal Mac formatting. Macs can read and write. PCs can only read and write if you instal a program on Windows that allows it.

2)
NTFS = Normal Windows format. Good for whatever you need on Windows. Macs can read it but can NOT write to it.

3)
FAT 32 (DOS format, as Apple calls it in their utility) = Old format that’s compatible with both Macs and Windows. Has a 4 GB file limit because it’s an old format. Flash drives use it as it’s good for moving files from one system to another that way.

– – – – –

I suggest option 1 up there. Format the drive as Mac OS Standard and then buy this:
https://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/
…for your PC.

[David Roth weiss]

[Jeff Carpenter] “I suggest option 1 up there. Format the drive as Mac OS Standard and then buy this:
https://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/
…for your PC.”

Absolutely!!! Jeff hit a homerun. MacDrive is the only efficient and effective solution.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Sean Oneil]

YOU CAN READ AND WRITE NTFS ON A FRICKIN MAC NOW!!! NOT ONE BUT TWO OPTIONS. Paragon is one. NTFS-3G is the other. THEY WORK. I’ve been using the latter for a while now to access my boot camp drive.

Sorry for shouting but I keep posting this and nobody seems to remember it.

Sean

[Chris Borjis]

[Sean ONeil] “YOU CAN READ AND WRITE NTFS ON A FRICKIN MAC NOW!!! NOT ONE BUT TWO OPTIONS. Paragon is one. NTFS-3G is the other. THEY WORK. I’ve been using the latter for a while now to access my boot camp drive.”

This is what I have.

Paragon is worth the buy and works well writing to NTFS volumes.

NTFS-3G while free I could not get to work on any
of my G5 systems. Some people who have got it to work and compared it to Paragon say its MUCH slower
than Paragon.

sometimes free is free for a reason.

[Dylan Reeve]

We have Paragon which works well. I’ve also used NTFS-3G – but as it’s a usermode driver it mounts the drives slightly different (OS X sees it more like a network drive I think) so we couldn’t use it with Avid.

We also have MacDrive on a few of our Windows machines. It also works well.