transfer video streams from mac to pc

[IMpactHorse]

Hi, folks! Tried the computer forum category on this one, got some good advice there, but thought maybe mac users could give me an extra hand too.
I need to take my pc hdd to my friend's mac, so he can transfer a few video streams that I'm supposed to encode and author to dvd. What kind of file system should I use? FAT32, NTFS, MAC OS JOURNALED? Is there a full compatibility (access/read/write) choice for both systems? Will a USB hdd case do the job, if I stick to a NTFS partition?

[BJ_M]

fat32 can be read just fine on a mac

[IMpactHorse]

That's what I heard BJ_M, but somebody also told that fat32 won't handle large disks, anything over 20GB will make it unworkable. Do you know anything about that? I guess I can make 6*20GB partitions, if that's the case.

But first, I have to save the streams from the mac hdd to this pc disk. What about that? Is the mac going to write data on the Win FAT32? Will that be read/write compatible when I swap the hdd back to the pc?

[BJ_M]

you can make at least 60GB fat32 partitions (cus i have some) and a lot larger ..

just that you cant do it from xp disk manager ..


but easy to do --

[BJ_M]

it will be read/write compatable ..


if you dont want to go that route ... use "mac drive" on your pc and format a disk for the mac and both your systems will see it just fine ////

[IMpactHorse]

Thanks for the valuable info, BJ_M. I'll try a 80 GB FAT32 partition. If that doesn't work, I'm going for Macdrive 6. Anyway, I'll post later 2 let peeps know. Thanx again!

[pixeljammedia]

FAT32 cannot write files larger than 4 GB which can be a problem with captured video. And Macs can read but cannot write to NTFS disks. I would consider partitioning your drive into a large NTFS partition and a smaller FAT32 partition, and making sure you have the ability to split large files. (like with Stuffit)

[BJ_M]

FAT32 has a 2TB limit on partition size

normally fat32 has 1 byte less than 4GB limit (4,294,967,295 Bytes) on file size ..

this is the version of fdisk that will write large HD's and to max size (practically - 137GB is the limit )

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q263044/

[IMpactHorse]

hmmm... bad news on testing macdrive... I used macdrive to format my hd, took to my friends house, we put it in a firewire case, but OS 9 had to initialize the drive to make it accessible, which it did, full read/write compatible. He says initialize = formating in Mac-enese :P
If true, Macdrive will only access "mac" hdd on PCs, so what's the point?

[SERBIAN]

Tell your friend to upgrade his OS to X...Then format your drive to FAT32 or NTFS and connect over FireWire...Everything will be fine..I have 80GB drive here /Two 40GB partitions/ in FAT32 using for transfering files from my clients PCs..