Technical problems - hard drive

[Rimmates.com]

Are there any computer geeks in here?

I have an external USB hard drive, 250GB, currently formatted in NTFS. It is "recognized" by my Mac OS X but will not write to it, presumably because of the file system. I thought OS X was straight Unix, which can read and write to NTFS partitions.

Should I format this thing to FAT32? Most USB flash drives are formatted FAT and work just fine on Macs. What is the drive size limit in FAT32? I thought it was 8GB or something. I really don't want 16 separate partitions just to get half of the drive space recognized by my Mac.

What do you use for your dual-configured offices so that one drive can hold both Mac and Windows data on the same drive?

Lastly, any tips for a Mac (OS 10.4) that seems to constantly freeze up and lock? It must think its a Windows PC - I've never seen a Mac freeze up this much.

[DEVELISH]

hi Rimmer

NTFS is proprietory to Microsoft - Linux distributions today can read NTFS but writing to NTFS partisions is as far as I know still experemental code.

Formatting it FAT32 is the best choice to go with being able to access a media on all platforms

:develish:

[Rimmates.com]

Would one parition in FAT32 cover 250GB or do I need to break it down into smaller ones? I don't mind 2 or 3, but hoping I don't need more than that.

Thanks Develish!

[DEVELISH]

according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat32 it is 8Terabyte - I recon if you use the large cluster sizes.

[Rimmates.com]

Fat32 can only handle 8,000 gigabytes? Well, I guess it'll have to do. :worker:

Isn't Wikipedia the best thing on earth? I should have looked there myself.

Now I'll have to research Macs that freeze and lock up for no reason.

Thanks again~!

[DEVELISH]

did you do the OS X updates?
what version of OS X are you running?