Re: using a portable drive with Linux and Mac

On Dec 12, 5:42 pm, bsh <brian_hi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
markhob...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Mark Hobley) wrote:
Bill Marcum <marcumb...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
...
If its NTFS, then I would just reformat it to FAT32. NTFS is nasty.

no, No, NO!

http://markhobley.yi.org:9070/NTFS

I read your document, and while ADS are a potential method
of malware data-hiding, this doesn't really affect the OQ,
does it? (BTW, ADS was implemented in NTFS to _specifically_
accomodate the different MacOS data and resource forks).

Moreover, and _much_ more importantly, I cannot stress
the susceptibility of data corruption in FAT filesystems;
indeed, in a HDD capacity (160Gb) that FAT32 won't
even support! FAT32 does not have redundant FATs, non-
optimal cluster sizes, no security metainfo, no aliases/
symbolic-links, can only portably hold 32Gb or less, is
especially prone to performance degradation with
defragmentation, and while initially a _slightly_ more
efficient filesystem, this drops off precipitously after
about 80 or more percent full. A voltage spike can turn
your FAT32 HDD into a paperweight in a microsecond. I know:
it's happened to me.

"Limitations of FAT32 File System":http://support.microsoft.com/kb/184006

Thirdly, MacOS "Tiger" at newer internally supports read-
only NTFS access:

"An overview of NTFS support in Tiger":http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050521110452194&lsrc=osxh

Since by "sharing" you presumably need write access,
there are still free and commercial options: MacFUSE
with NTFS-3G, or Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X (q.v.)
Good luck!

=Brian

I haven't done anything yet, but I was leaning toward FAT32. Thanks
for that heads-up.

Another possibility I've been considering is to get Parallels to run
Linux on my MacBook Pro (Intel). I figure I could then just format the
portable drive with ext3 (or whatever my Dell Red Hat Linux uses). Any
comments on that?

I actually prefer the Red Hat Desktop to the Mac anyway. The
disadvantage of this approach is that I would need to install a few
applications that I use on Linux (XEmacs, Python2.5, GRACE plotting,
etc.). They are already installed on my Mac. Or could I just copy them
from the Dell onto the portable drive?
.

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