NTFS or FAT32?

[sonicspeed720]

so far, my only purpose for using the other partition would be for gaming...would the file system affect the speed/performance of the games?

 

my other (tentative) purpose would be for my (soon to be bought) zune...or ipod...i still can't decide....but anyways i figured that that shouldn't make much of a difference because i can just use vmware to access the partition to wirelessly sync my zune to my library (can anyone see a problem with the wireless syncing capabilities of the zune/windows even if i use vmware? i can't see any problem...but if so that could push me over to buying an ipod...lol) unless, of course...vmware can't exchange files between HFS+ and NTFS...can it? if not, then that makes my decision easier...

 

everything else can be done on a mac. and as a recent switcher...i'm surprised...and glad

[Obocop]

As you've sort of already pointed out, windows can't write HFS+ and Macs can't write NTFS, so if you want to do so, you'll need Media Four's Mac Drive and Paragon's NTFS for Mac if you want to work seemlessly between them. Mac Drive is readily available throughout torrent sites, but i've had a lot of problems finding Paragon, so i'll probably end up buying it - it's $30US (i'm using the trial version atm).

At the moment, i'm using Parallels instead of VMware, with one HFS+ disk and an NTFS disk and it works great. Until recently however, the other disk I was using was a FAT32, and I haven't noticed any difference in speed between them. The only reason I reformatted it to NTFS was that I was sick of the 32GB space constraint. Unfortunately, I didn't check if Parallels worked before I installed NTFS for Mac, so i'm unsure if Parallels or VMware would work with NTFS disks without the aid of NFTS for Mac.

[ontoid]

Also you can use MacFuse and NTFS3G for macos that gives you full NTFS access under osx.

[Obocop]

Word of warning though, i'd advise to set your HFS drives to read only under the Mac Drive options. Reason is, you don't want Windows screwing up your Macintosh HD, which happened to me about 6 months ago. I was using Maya 7 in windows as a UB version wasn't available yet. I was rendering to my Macintosh HD, straight from Windows so I could just restart and comp it in Shake.....BIG MISTAKE . During rendering, it froze and needed a cold restart. Basically it corrupted my Macintosh HD and disk utility couldn't fix it because windows did it, and windows couldn't fix it because it's a HFS drive. I had to go out and buy a new 320GB HDD, coz i didn't want to erase it (had all my work still on it) so i could continue. When I handed in all my assignments I went back at it with Disk Warrior, which worked a treat. Point is, be careful when writing to your Mac HDD's from Windows. I've had no problems now that i've set them to read only. It's also a good idea to put your Windows and Mac OS's on different physical drives, rather than just partitioning one drive, so if one crashes badly, you can still use the other one.So in answer to your question, I'd make your windows partition an NTFS disk and just do restarts with bootcamp to access it, or install Paragon's NTFS for Mac if you want to access it from your Mac OS. That way you'll have the space to install heaps of games, and keep things stable.

Also you can use MacFuse and NTFS3G for macos that gives you full NTFS access under osx.

That was what I was going to do, but I read on several forums that the MacFUSE option had very slow read/write access....can't clarify that though.You could format your IPod/Zune whatever you wanted if you installed both NTFS for Mac and Mac Drive or did the MacFUSE thing, you just can't take it round to a mates place to get music etc, unless you do the wireless thing.

[U.C.]

MSJ UK for all your NTFS Needs

[sonicspeed720]

would it be possible to network the ntfs partition? thus making it available to the mac partition as read/write (i have a laptop...thus only 1 HDD)

 

and obocop, as per the 32GB limit for the FAT32 file system on windows, i found a small program fat32format that can create FAT32 partitions greater than 32GB (the physical limits of FAT32 is ≈ 2TB but XP/Vista set the limit to 32GB for whatever reason)

 

it's not mine...and i give credit to him. haha. http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/fat32format.htm

 

so the size of the partition is of no problem to me...i doubt i'll want a partition bigger than 32GB anyways. but if there really is no speed difference at all, i think i would prefer FAT32 simply because of the lack of problems and third-party programs and because OSX will remain as my primary OS. if there is a speed difference, then i would choose NTFS.

 

Why have you all chosen NTFS over FAT32?

[macgirl]

Also you can use MacFuse and NTFS3G for macos that gives you full NTFS access under osx.

That was what I was going to do, but I read on several forums that the MacFUSE option had very slow read/write access....can't clarify that though.You could format your IPod/Zune whatever you wanted if you installed both NTFS for Mac and Mac Drive or did the MacFUSE thing, you just can't take it round to a mates place to get music etc, unless you do the wireless thing.

Also, Native and MacFuse - NTFS3G has no ability to read/write properly on compressed drives/folders, so better use Paragon's NTFS

[sonicspeed720]

so everyone says that OSX can read NTFS by default (without a 3rd party program) but cannot write...

 

can windows read HFS+ without another program? (i assume windows cannot write to HFS+ either)

[vin]

so everyone says that OSX can read NTFS by default (without a 3rd party program) but cannot write...

 

can windows read HFS+ without another program? (i assume windows cannot write to HFS+ either)

windows cannot read/write HFS+ without 3rd party app. Two applications i knew, macdrive and transmac to read/write HFS+