Filesystems... One good fpr Mac AND PC?

[Bauzi]

Hey there,

*sigh* All these file systems are just a big compatibility issue. So... I'll get my Mac Book hopefully tomorrow and I need a new external drive for footage or I will have to reformat one of my old drives.

The problem is: What is a good file system for booth systems? Mac (Snow Leopard) and PC (Windows 7 Ultimate)
-FAT 32: Eh... I need bigger files than 4GB
-NTFS: Eh... AFAIk: Read only for Macs -.-'
-HFS+: Windows: Forget it! Or use a commercial program like TransMac.

Has anybody a suggestion (a program, a filesystem) that is compatible with Mac and Windows PCs and suitable for digital video editing?

Thx in advice!

[LantisEscudo]

Well, you can get HFS read/write support on Windows through MacDrive ($50 US).

Alternatively, you can get NTFS read/write support on Mac OS through the combination of MacFUSE (free) and ntfs-3g (also free, link goes to current version as of this post).

I've had some write speed issues with the MacFUSE option (pretty slow for me), but my system was also old and slow, so that may not be an issue for you.

[Kionon]

Or you could just use boot camp, which installs drivers allowing Windows to read and write to HFS+.

[Bauzi]

Alternatively, you can get NTFS read/write support on Mac OS through the combination of MacFUSE (free) and ntfs-3g (also free, link goes to current version as of this post).

I've had some write speed issues with the MacFUSE option (pretty slow for me), but my system was also old and slow, so that may not be an issue for you.

Thank you very much. I think the write speed will be fairly enough for storeing finished projects and files. I just hope that I play my mp3 collection without problems from the NTFS drives.

@Kionon:
Thanks, but there is a reason why I said "Windows PCs"

I already have a powerfull Windows 7 laptop, but maybe there is a reason why I still should have bootcamp on my Macbook? There might be something that I didn't thought of.

[Kionon]

Well, technically, if you put windows on a mac, it is now a "Windows PC."

The only reason for boot camp I can see is if you have Adobe Premiere projects prior to CS4. Premiere 6.5, as routinely mentioned by me, is no longer stable, and doesn't really run on anything newer than Panther. Premiere Pro 1-CS2 aren't mac based, and CS3 won't open non-mac project files. CS4 will.

...but if you have a Windows 7 machine, you can finish those projects on that. I can't. I don't have a windows machine.

[Qyot27]

How well does OS X handle ext2/3 volumes? I'm not asking about ext4 because I figure that won't be properly supported for a while (mostly that's for Windows, but a very cursory Google search leads me to believe OS X doesn't support it yet either). ext4 easily would win if it was possible, though - I've been using it on Ubuntu for the past 6 months and haven't had any problems.

There are Windows support drivers for ext2/3 volumes (here's one, and here's another), and depending on what OS X's support is like, you might not have to worry about the access/write speed issues that NTFS-3G has.

[Kionon]

I think it can, I'll need to look into it though.

[Bauzi]

Well, technically, if you put windows on a mac, it is now a "Windows PC."

Ah damn it. Curse you, intel-architectures!

Yeah I still have an avisynth-Windows project to finish.


I think the lack of filesystem supports is quite dumb.

[Kionon]

I lied. I just installed windows via boot camp and the drivers are READ ONLY.

Guess macdrive might be my only option if I want to write to HFS, which I am not yet sure I want to...

[Bauzi]

I once tried TransMac, but the i/o speed was just around 10MB/s. That's not really pleasent. Is Macdrive maybe faster?