Portable USB drive. Which format?

[Tom Stiller]

In article <beefj3110ik@enews2.newsguy.com>,
Stephen M. Adams <adamst@direcway.com> wrote:

> "Glo8al" <glo8alNO@SPAMhotmail.com> writes:

> >On Mon, 07 Jul 2003 18:08:09 +1000, Glo8al wrote:
> >

> >> I have a USB2 drive (made from an old 20Gb labtop drive and a USB2
> >> case) I would like to format this so I can see it on both Mac and PC.
> >> I thought this could be done, and Mac can see PC CDs, and floppies but
> >> I think that is because they are formatted as FAT16, but as the drive
> >> is 20Gb I can;t format it FAT16, and FAT32 doesn't seem to work for
> >> OS9 or OSX.
> >> Can I get it to work for both platforms without third party software?
> >> Thx

> >
> >FYI, you can use FAT32 and it will be seen by both platforms, and in
> >OSX10.3 it will have NTFS support.

>
> Except that with Win2k, you have a 32Gb limit for FAT32....I've a friend
> who wants to configure a 120Gb WD drive to have a 32Gb FAT partition and
> a 78Gb OS X extended partition, but Win2k won't recognize it if you
> partition is on the Mac, and Win2k can't make Mac disks. :-(
>
> Any ideas? I searched WD's website, but it didn't say anything helpful.
>

Can you partition it on the Win2k system and then change the type of the
partition to be used on the Mac with pdisk?

--
Tom Stiller

PGP fingerprint = 5108 DDB2 9761 EDE5 E7E3
7BDA 71ED 6496 99C0 C7CF

[Stephen M. Adams]

Tom Stiller <tomstiller@comcast.net> writes:

>In article <beefj3110ik@enews2.newsguy.com>,
> Stephen M. Adams <adamst@direcway.com> wrote:
>

>> "Glo8al" <glo8alNO@SPAMhotmail.com> writes:

>> >On Mon, 07 Jul 2003 18:08:09 +1000, Glo8al wrote:
>> >
>> >> I have a USB2 drive (made from an old 20Gb labtop drive and a USB2
>> >> case) I would like to format this so I can see it on both Mac and PC.
>> >> I thought this could be done, and Mac can see PC CDs, and floppies but
>> >> I think that is because they are formatted as FAT16, but as the drive
>> >> is 20Gb I can;t format it FAT16, and FAT32 doesn't seem to work for
>> >> OS9 or OSX.
>> >> Can I get it to work for both platforms without third party software?
>> >> Thx
>> >
>> >FYI, you can use FAT32 and it will be seen by both platforms, and in
>> >OSX10.3 it will have NTFS support.

>>
>> Except that with Win2k, you have a 32Gb limit for FAT32....I've a friend
>> who wants to configure a 120Gb WD drive to have a 32Gb FAT partition and
>> a 78Gb OS X extended partition, but Win2k won't recognize it if you
>> partition is on the Mac, and Win2k can't make Mac disks. :-(
>>
>> Any ideas? I searched WD's website, but it didn't say anything helpful.
>>

>Can you partition it on the Win2k system and then change the type of the
>partition to be used on the Mac with pdisk?

Doing anything at all with the disk on the Mac trashes the Windows
signature. :-(

I'm thinking that it's time to invest in software to mount mac drives
on the Win2k system. WD seems to think it's impossible any other way.
And having tried just about everything, I can't find a solution other
than software for the PC.

-Stephen