josetann Posted December 13, 2007 Share Posted December 13, 2007 Ok, I know the easy way to access an internal drive from both OS X and Vista is to format it as FAT32, however this is a terabyte drive, plus I don't want to deal with the 4GB file size limitation of FAT32. I know there are ways to access an NTFS drive from within OS X, and to access an HFS drive from within Windows, but I don't know which is the best way to do it. I.e. maybe accessing NTFS from OS X is relatively trouble-free while accessing HFS from Vista leads to corrupted drives and all kinds of problems, or vice versa. So, other than just networking the drive (I'll have an external NAS setup, but this particular drive I want to keep internal), what do you recommend? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SticMAC™ Posted December 13, 2007 Share Posted December 13, 2007 Macdrive in Vista ntfs-3g in Macosx SticMAN Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
josetann Posted December 13, 2007 Author Share Posted December 13, 2007 Macdrive in Vista ntfs-3g in Macosx SticMAN Right...but I'm not going to format the drive as HFS and NTFS, only one or the other. So which is better, MacDrive or ntfs-3g? If MacDrive is better, then I will format the terabyte drive as HFS, access it natively in OS X, and access it through MacDrive in Vista. If ntfs-3g is better, then I will format the terabyte drive as NTFS, access it natively in Vista, and through ntfs-3g in OS X. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
idividebyzero Posted December 13, 2007 Share Posted December 13, 2007 Macdrive is way better. No speed issues, its the same speed as if it was native, no corruption issues. Plus youll beable to fix your OSX install if you ever break it by replacing files in Windows. The ONLY downside to macdrive is that if the hdd's dont unmount properly inside OS X (like if it crashes or you just reset it) then they wont mount in Windows. You must boot back into OS X and shut down properly, or -s mode, or the DVD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
josetann Posted December 14, 2007 Author Share Posted December 14, 2007 Thanks. I thought I had read where there were some problems with MacDrive, but it was an old version (I remember the post was made in 2005), and I don't even remember what the issue was. Hadn't really read up on any of the Mac programs for accessing ntfs. This helps. Regardless of which way I go, I'll still install a program in each OS to access the others, that way I can still get to my Vista partition while in OS X, and to my OS X partition when in Vista. The terabyte drive will be used all the time though, not just for emergencies, so I want to make sure I do it right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
qbattersby Posted December 15, 2007 Share Posted December 15, 2007 I have used MacDrive and experienced performance issues, it was the newest version. It either would take forever transferring files or for example if I tried to extract a rar file that was on the HFS partition, Gears of War in this circumstance it just plain old wouldnt work, perhaps due to Vista, but it was frustrating and didn't want to take the time to figure out the issue. Seems either way HFS or NTFS have performance issues. I would not by all means rely on it, but if there were files you needed to transfer back and forth and are willing to wait then sure. As for which, I would go with HFS and use MacDrive as was stated previously. Works better than NTFS3g. Hope that helps, I figured you would want someone who has some experience testing this, I played with it about a week ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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