[Keith Henderson: OFF: Questions for techies]

[Paul Mather]

On Oct 30, 2009, at 8:29 AM, Carl Edlund Anderson wrote:

> On 29 Oct 2009, at 12:04 , Jeff Thompson wrote:
>>> If you are just storing MP3s/AACs, the file sizes may be small, so  
>>> you might not run into any problems when plugging a Windows- 
>>> formatted drive into a Mac.  However, I would investigate the  
>>> issue in greater depth if you really wanted cross-platform  
>>> compatability.  (I don't -- I just use my drives with my Macs --  
>>> so it hasn't mattered to me.)
>>
>> I don't have a problem with it ... my FAT formatted drive serves my
>> Mac's 100 gig iTunes library.  But I convert my FLAC files to AAC
>> to play in the iPod and then just to play those instead, so I am
>> not using files that are huge than 20 or 30 megabytes for
>> something the length of an album side like Jethro Tull's "Thick
>> as a Brick."
>
>
> Well, I have had FAT-formatted drives choke and crash when  
> transferring big ol' files on and off -- like a FLAC or Apple  
> Lossless version of a side of "Thick as a Brick".  Online  
> investigation revealed there could be some problems with large file  
> sizes and FAT drives in cross-platform context -- I didn't really  
> look into it deeply, as I just reformatted the drives to NTFS and  
> restored the material from backup!  But there are, clearly,  
> situations where that might be problematic ....  Anyway, that's just  
> been my experience! :)

FAT-formatted filesystems do have size limitations: the maximum file  
size is 4 GB, which means it is not a good medium for mastering ISO  
files for burning to DVD (which would be larger than 4 GB if you  
filled the DVD space).

FAT is also less robust to crashes than alternative file systems, and  
so is more susceptible to corruption should you suffer, say, a power  
failure when writing data.  The FAT design also leads it to be prone  
to problems of fragmentation, which can slow down I/O and negatively  
affect performance on large disks.

NTFS---the standard file system under Windows---is problematic because  
Microsoft keep secret its innards, typically only licensing read-only  
drivers for other platforms.  But, that's not to say you can't get  
read-write support for other systems, often in the form of the  
wonderful, reverse-engineered NTFS-3G driver (http:// 
www.ntfs-3g.org/).  (Mac users might also like to know that Snow  
Leopard contains NTFS write support, though it is disabled by default,  
possibly because it is not considered production-ready.)  So,  
formatting an external drive as NTFS is a good option nowadays, and,  
in doing so, you overcome the 4 GB file size limitation, as well as  
the performance and reliability issues that accompany FAT.

Cheers,

Paul.