MAC PC Hard Drive compatibility issues

TheForce

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Oct 13, 2003
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This is a catch 22 issue on Hard drive compatibility.

MAC is HFS+ file system which permits file sizes in excess of 4Gb.

PC uses NTFS for file sizes > 4Gb.

I need to work with large video files that need to be transported between MAC and PC.


MAC and PC people all recommend FAT 32 for compatibility to both. But, FAT 32 doesn't permit file sizes > 4Gb.


Is there a solution?
 
This is a catch 22 issue on Hard drive compatibility.

MAC is HFS+ file system which permits file sizes in excess of 4Gb.

PC uses NTFS for file sizes > 4Gb.

I need to work with large video files that need to be transported between MAC and PC.


MAC and PC people all recommend FAT 32 for compatibility to both. But, FAT 32 doesn't permit file sizes > 4Gb.


Is there a solution?
Don, I think you're going to need to network the Mac and PC together over Ethernet and map a shared drive from the PC to the Mac. I have an external 500 GB USB drive that I used to transfer files from my old PCs over to my Mac and I used NTFS for the partition. Like you discovered, the Mac will read NTFS just fine, but it doesn't support writing to the drive. MacFUSE is third-party support for OS X that permits read & write access to NTFS volumes, but I have no experience with it, so use at your own risk.

There is also the UFS Explorer Professional, from SysDevSoftware - Software Downloads - TechRepublic for accessing the HFS+ volume under Windows, but I have no experience with it and don't know if it gives the ease of just selecting the HFS+ volume in your video application.
 
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Thanks for all the tips.

I did buy my regular external hard drive for the MacBook Pro yesterday. It is a WD 1 TB triple interface (2 500Gb) and I plan to format it for HFS+ I don't do much HD yet so I felt this would be a really great way to learn FCP 6. I have a personal short project I shot in PA last weekend in HDV and it doesn't have a deadline. But the issue here is to be able to transport mov files from a MAC FCP project over to the PC for additional work in Vegas. Working with both I have found that Vegas is soooo much faster, even with FCP captured mov files than rendering in FCP. But it doesn't look like I'll be able to easily do what I want uinless these 3rd party tools you described can work.

I was planning on posting another thread about the network drives to see if anyone has any experience with them. I have one application that I need to access the data from several computers and keeping the data on one computer with a backup drive has proven to be loaded with hidden errors. While applications like this would work great with a network drive, I doubt my video work will due to the speed of the network. Mac people are saying they want to see a firewire 800 drive for HD work. That's why I went with that type of drive.
From what I saw at NAB FCP6 works very well with HD as opposed to Vegas which can't play the timeline in real time without hesitation. Then once the project is edited, with FCP, I can just let it render, for days if necessary and it won't hold up my other SD work. It's always a balance of what tools work best in each case. Neither is perfect for all tasks.
 
I know it's bad form to resurrect an ancient thread like this, but I came across a native NTFS Read/Write support for Mac OS 11.4 and beyond. Apple has Paragon's NTFS "driver" on their download site: Apple - Downloads - System/Disk Utilities - Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X where you can download a 10-day free trial. The purchase price is $40.

Here's the Manual in PDF form:
 

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