External hard drive Mac/PC

[FlyingJ 0]

I'm in the market for a new external hard drive and am wondering if it is possible to set one up to be hot swappable between a Mac and a PC. The primary purpose of the drive will be storage of all of my pics, videos, etc., but I would like to be able to go back and forth between platforms if possible.

I generally know just enough about this kind of stuff to screw it up and cause myself more trouble than it's worth, so I appreciate the input of those that know and understand far more than me.

I also appreciate the input from those that are just like me and don't really know but go ahead and reply anyway. I know you mean well!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Killing threads since 2004.

[ikon 0]

Yes, you can. You'll just need to format the external drive as Fat32 filesystem. Which to keep it easy for you means plug it into your Windows box first.

Oh, and both USB and ESATA are hot-swappable so you can get either kind of external case.

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[FlyingJ 0]

Doesn't this result in me having a limit of 4gb or something like that? I seem to remember trying this previously and my several hundred gb drive was only good for a fraction of the total.

Again, only know enough to screw things up, so hopefully my memory is faulty. Thanks for the website suggestion.

Killing threads since 2004.

[Coreece 190]

Quote

Doesn't this result in me having a limit of 4gb or something like that?

Yes...the largest file you'd be able to store is 4GB, not good if working with video.

There are also limitations in the total size of the drive depending on your windows operating system.

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[PhreeZone 15]

Look around, there are plenty of free tools for the PC to let you get around the limitation imposed by Windows Disk Manager. I formatted a 250 gig drive as FAT32 for my PS3 and I'm able to use all of it.

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[gearless_chris 1]

Is there a limitation if I'm only using it for a PC?

"If it wasn't easy stupid people couldn't do it", Duane.

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[jcd11235 0]

Quote

Is there a limitation if I'm only using it for a PC?

The 4 GiB limit is a FAT 32 filesystem limitation, so it doesn't matter what OS you use it with. If you are only using an external drive with Windows, the NTFS is a better filesystem choice.

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[normiss 622]

The FAT32 limit can also be over-ridden with a drive overlay software.

[PhreeZone 15]

FAT32 will let you run 8 Terabyte partitions but it will only let you run 4 gig files. For most purposes the file size is not an issue but if you are doing video editing with large files it might be an issue.

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[FlyingJ 0]

Quote

FAT32 will let you run 8 Terabyte partitions but it will only let you run 4 gig files. For most purposes the file size is not an issue but if you are doing video editing with large files it might be an issue.

So it's only a file size concern and not a total drive size concern?

I have a 500gb drive that I would like to use to move upwards of 400gb of pics, music, videos, etc. off of a PC and my Macbook.

Do I understand correctly that if I use FAT32 I can make use of the full size of the drive as long as my files are under 4gb?

Killing threads since 2004.

[jcd11235 0]

Quote

Do I understand correctly that if I use FAT32 I can make use of the full size of the drive as long as my files are under 4gb?

Yes, that is correct.

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[PhreeZone 15]

That is correct. You will need to use a formating tool other then the cheap Windows Fdisk tool though. That tool has limitations that are far below your drive size. Look around for free disk formating tools online that do FAT32 and you are set.

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[FlyingJ 0]

Is there a benefit to formatting it on the mac vs pc? Mac is a year old and runs great, pc is 10 or so years old and runs like a slug. Would like to do it via the mac if possible.

Killing threads since 2004.

[FlyingJ 0]

Have finally had time to read a little more. Sounds like if I use mac disk utility and choose "ms-dos format" it will automatically format as Fat32 based on the size of my drive. Going to give it a go and hope it works!

Killing threads since 2004.

[FlyingJ 0]

Using Disk Utility on the Mac worked well. I'm able to open/save on both windows and Mac.

One more question though. How come every harddrive I attach has less total capacity than advertised. For instance...brand new Iomega 320gb, new out of the box, shows that it has 298gb of space total. What happened to my extra 22gb? I've seen it with the two other portable drives I have too.

Killing threads since 2004.

[jcd11235 0]

Quote

Using Disk Utility on the Mac worked well. I'm able to open/save on both windows and Mac.

One more question though. How come every harddrive I attach has less total capacity than advertised. For instance...brand new Iomega 320gb, new out of the box, shows that it has 298gb of space total. What happened to my extra 22gb? I've seen it with the two other portable drives I have too.

1 Gigabyte (1 GB) = 1 billion bytes

1 gibibyte (1 GiB) = 2^30 bytes = 1,073,741,824 bytes

Most software developers use the giga- (or kilo-, mega-, tera- etc) prefix when they mean gibi-. Doing so is inconsistent with the IEEE 1541 standard and goes against centuries of history of the use of the decimal prefixes of the metric system. Some Linux developers and Apple (beginning with parts of OS X 10.6) have, to varying degrees, began to correct this error in their operating systems by using prefixes and measurements that correctly match.

Hard drive manufacturers are, surprisingly, the ones who have been listing proper sizes on their drives all along.

So, you bought a 320 Gigabyte (320 billion bytes) drive, and your computer is listing the size as 298 gibibytes (approx 320 billion bytes), but the computer lists the wrong abbreviation for the unit it uses.

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