Fat32 and Mac

C

catawampus

Member
I want to format my external drives FAT32 so they can be read on a mac and the pc laptop i am using for p2 in the field. I cannot get xp to let me format fat32. disk management only allows ntfs. research has told me fat 32 in xp can only format partitions 32 gig. i am using 2 250 drives in a raid 1 enclosure from sans digital.

is there a way around this? i want to capture with the pc in the field but still import/edit on a mac with fcp. i have read a lot about people doing this very thing but i cant figure it out.

thanks guys
 
You just have to make 30 gig partions.
Then you can format each partition as FAT 32
I have about 6 externals set-up like that.
You can get some 3rd party software
like Partition Magic to format the whole
volume as FAT 32 but I like the drive
partitioned anyway.
 
As THoff says, the 32GB restriction is an artificial limitation imposed by the Windows format utility. Other formatting utilities can make much larger partitions, up to either 2 terabytes or 4 terabytes in size. FAT32 is not limited to 32GB partitions.

Use a proper FAT32 formatter (I use Swiss Knife, a free download) and you can format your entire hard disk as one partition.
 
What I much prefer is MacDrive running on PCs. That allows the PC to read/write to and from an Apple HFS+ drive or partition. The latest version runs on both Vista and XP.

Ned Soltz
 
carlone said:
Great Info -
Is there anyway around the 4 Gig Files Size limit using Fat 32?
Click to expand...
Nope, no way, no how. FAT32 uses unsigned 32-bit integers to keep track of file sizes (that's where the 32 in FAT32 comes from), and you therefore cannot represent values larger than 2^32.

The good news is that you will never need to create files larger than 4GB if you stick to P2/MXF files from the camera or your NLE (if it supports outputting back in this format).
 
I use a PC laptop for field work and transfer to my Mac Pro. One thing to consider is that the Mac can read NTSF even tho it cannot write, so you could just format the drives as NTSF and use them in the Mac as Read-only.
 
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just a note ----
while fat32 is good because it works on both mac and a pc, but I would not use that same drive for achival purposes. It is unreliable when going back and forth between these OS and especially for consistent read/writes. You are much more likely to suffer data loss with this.

You should archive in your edit format. So get extra drives and format them to HFS+.
 
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Fat32 will run like a dog and strongly disagree with using it. MacDrive allows you to have the apple partitions as previously stated, and it works absolutely great. Take a look into that.

- Kyle
 
how do i format the drives with macdrive? do i have to format them all in advance on the mac and then use with the pc. seem like a lot of extra labor and risk to bare drives. formate ntfs and use as read only's for import and archive seems like the simplest/safest way.
 
MacDrive is installed on the PC. Nothing more you need to do. If you mount a Mac formatted removable drive on the PC, it is then visible to the PC and it can read/write.

Ned Soltz
 
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