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zanyterp · Feb 22, 2004, 11:29 PM

i am a computer science student at one of the local colleges and, as many of you have probably experienced, the computers i will be using are windows xp (pro?) and linux based. i have a usb flash drive and wondering if it is possible to format it to 2 partitions-one windows and the other mac? if it is possible, what program do i use? i tried with disk utility but it is either a hidden ability or is no longer part of the utility....or is it not possible to do? i would like to have the same drive i can use at home and at school. thanks!!

nick

larkost · Feb 24, 2004, 07:05 PM

Hint: Mac's have been able to use FAT16 (the default format on USB Thumb drives) since system 7.6 (or earlier... can't remember at the moment... since the original superdirves came out... the floppy drive ones....). Unless you are moving things that require resource forks you can get by on FAT16 (and if you need resource forks... then read/write .dmg's to the rescue).

Oh.. and Linux can read FAT16 too... as can the *BSD's, BeOS, etc...

zanyterp · Feb 24, 2004, 09:44 PM

Originally posted by larkost:
Hint: Mac's have been able to use FAT16 (the default format on USB Thumb drives) since system 7.6 (or earlier... can't remember at the moment... since the original superdirves came out... the floppy drive ones....). Unless you are moving things that require resource forks you can get by on FAT16 (and if you need resource forks... then read/write .dmg's to the rescue).

Oh.. and Linux can read FAT16 too... as can the *BSD's, BeOS, etc...

right. . .so just format it on a pc and don't worry about a mac partition? is that read/write .dmg allow me to save things to use on my mac? and the source code would not require resource forks, right?
thanks!!

larkost · Feb 26, 2004, 02:05 PM

You've got almost everything down... The R/W .dmg would only be used for things that require a resource fork (mostly MacOS 9 Applications), in fact I have never had cause to actually create and use one. Almost everything from MacOS X will live on a non resource-fork aware partition just fine (I am not in any way advocating formatting your main drive as UFS).

For data files this has been true on Macs for a very long time.

zanyterp · Feb 26, 2004, 05:35 PM

Originally posted by larkost:
You've got almost everything down... The R/W .dmg would only be used for things that require a resource fork (mostly MacOS 9 Applications), in fact I have never had cause to actually create and use one. Almost everything from MacOS X will live on a non resource-fork aware partition just fine (I am not in any way advocating formatting your main drive as UFS).

For data files this has been true on Macs for a very long time.

so just format it and go on the pc? i just wanted to make sure before i did that and then not able to play well as i thought it would :-) and windows wouldn't recognize it even if it were in UFS, right? is there an app i can use on my mac to format to pc? or just do it on the ones at school. . .if i can find one that will allow me to do that. :-/

nick

larkost · Feb 27, 2004, 12:00 PM

There are ways of formatting a disk in FAT16 (sometimes called DOS format) on Macs, but I have not actually done it on MacOS X in a long time. It does not matter where you format it, as long as you choose FAT16, pretty much everything will be able to use it.

On a side note: I would not advise using UFS anywhere where you have a choice. It has been replaced with newer formats pretty much everywhere. On Macs it has been generally a bad idea since MacOS X Server 1.x.

Dr.Michael · Mar 4, 2004, 05:29 AM

I use external drives to transport data from Windows to linux and Mac OSX.

The only way that I know that works well and stable is to format the external drive on a Windows Computer with FAT 32!

Linux AND Mac can read this.

The Mac option to format a drive in DOS Format always resulted in disk failure after a short time and poor performance. I had to re-format soon.
And don't try to verify or repair a FAT formated disk on your Mac! I have bad experiences with that.

Notice that FAT 32 is a bit slower on Macs than hfs+.

But in general FAT 32 works fine. Be prepared that your data is not absolutely safe. So don't use a FAT formated drive as backup medium.

Michael

MarkDouma™ · Mar 13, 2004, 02:19 PM

The internal hard drive on your Mac is likely formatted as HFS+, which is the native Mac format. HFS+ supports "forked" files, where files can contain two separate parts or forks: the data fork and the resource fork. In addition to this, the Mac also records "metadata" information about files, such as a file's creation or modification date, label, comments, creator code, file type, etc. This metadata information is stored in the HFS+ disk directory.

Many other platforms, like Windows, use a "flat" file system such as FAT32, which does not support forks or the rich Mac metadata for files.

Both OS 9 and OS X attempt to preserve the resource fork and HFS+ metadata information when writing files to file systems that don't support this information.

OS 9 uses, for lack of a better name, a "RESOURCE.FRK & FINDER.DAT" method to preserve this information when writing files to PC (FAT) formatted floppies or other drives. The "RESOURCE.FRK" folder contained all of the resource fork information for the files on the disk, and the FINDER.DAT files contains the HFS+ metadata. When you place these disks in your Mac (running OS 9), you won't see these files, however. OS 9 makes everything seem as though you were writing the information to a Mac (HFS+) formatted floppy. If you go to a PC though, and insert the disk, you'll be able to see this "RESOURCE.FRK & FINDER.DAT" structure as shown in these images

OS X also uses a method to preserve the resource fork and HFS+ metadata when writing files to PC (FAT) formatted floppies or other drives. It's called the Apple Double format. In this method, the data fork of a file is written to a file with the same exact name as the original file. The resource fork (if any) and HFS+ metadata is then written to a file that has the same name except for a "._" in front of it. So when you copy these files from a PC formatted disk onto your Mac OS X disk, the 2 files are joined back together into their original form.

Hope this helps....

Angus_D · Mar 13, 2004, 05:52 PM

Just don't use NTFS. I think there's read-only support as of Panther, but no write or anything.