Windows/Mac File Systems
This is kind of a simultaneous vent session and cry for help. I will gladly accept input from anyone who has some advice. I just asked one person via email and hope he’s got a good answer. If so, I’ll follow up here.
Ok, for any new readers, let’s preface this with some facts:
- I’m a geek
- I have a lot of computers
- I grew up on MS Windows
- My relationship with windows ends with XP
- I tried converting to Ubuntu a couple times, but FAIL
- I tried converting to Mac a few times, and finally SUCCEEDED
- Citrix (to connect to a client) works best on XP
- I need to keep my XP machine, but I prever my Mac
Ok, there’s your background. Now here’s my dilemma. I have three external USB drives, and I need to organize the files on the lot of them. It would be INFINITELY convenient if I could format them each as one partition that worked with both XP and MacOS. I have 10.5 Leopard if that’s relevant. All the drives are formatted as NTFS right now, but I can shuttle files around enough to clear them and reformat them one at a time. What file system should I use, though?
- NTFS is perfect for XP, but Mac can only read it. I need read/write.
- Fat32 works great for both systems, but I’m not breaking my 500GB drive into 15 32GB partitions.
- Mac’s default is, what, HFS+? XP can’t read that natively.
The fourth option, the one I need, is either a file system that works with both operating systems, or a utility for one that allows it to read the others’.
Suggestions?