What's the best way to format an external HDD for both OSX and Windows ?

Posted by George Profenza on Super User See other posts from Super User or by George Profenza
Published on 2011-01-07T23:38:23Z Indexed on 2011/01/07 23:56 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 270

Filed under:

Windows

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osx

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hard-drive

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usb

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filesystems

I have an external HDD (1TB) and I'd like to use it on OSX and Windows. I had another external HDD using NTFS and I used NTFS-3G on osx to write files, but I found the reading/writing very slow.

Googling a bit I see many people recommend HFS+ in conjuction with HFS Explorer for Windows. Is this the best way ?

Is it possible to have two partitions, one HFS+ and one NTFS ? Is it a good option or is it better to use one partition ?

I've seen this thread on using UDF for USB flash drive. Would that be suited for an USB external HDD ?

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