[Big Mac]

Anyone know of a way to host on a G5 a backup drive with an NTFS partition? Is there a Mac utility that can create one aside from Boot Camp?

[mduell]

I'm confused. Do you want to create an NTFS partition or does the disk already have one?

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by mduell 

I'm confused. Do you want to create an NTFS partition or does the disk already have one?

Okay, here's a more detailed explanation. Let's say I have a big backup hard drive in my G5, and in addition to wanting to backup my Mac drives, I'd also like to keep a backup of my business PC's drive. I would like to have an HFS+ partition and an NTFS partition on that same drive and want to know if that's possible to do without Boot Camp.

[mduell]

I still can't make sense of what you're trying to do or why you're trying to do it.

If the drive is physically installed in your PowerMac, are you taking it out every day and plugging it into your PC? Why not just backup over the network onto an HFS partition in the PowerMac?

[brokenjago]

He wants to know if you there is a utility that will partition his hard drive into TWO partitions: one (J)HFS+ and one NTFS, WITHOUT using boot Camp.

Me? I have no idea.

[Big Mac]

Thank you for explaining it further, brokenjago.

Originally Posted by mduell 

Why not just backup over the network onto an HFS partition in the PowerMac?

I guess I could do that, but I'd prefer having NTFS so that the PC won't get fussy about backing up to a foreign filesystem and to be able to do a more or less straight image from the laptop to the partition and vice versa. My Dell really freaked me out today when Explorer failed to accurately copy over a tiny folder - I almost lost valuable work. With all of the things that can go wrong on a PC, I need backups.

[peeb]

Why not use FAT32? The mac and the pc will be ok with it, and if it's just for backups, none of the reasons to use NTFS are as compelling.

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by peeb 

Why not use FAT32? The mac and the pc will be ok with it, and if it's just for backups, none of the reasons to use NTFS are as compelling.

Correct, except the partition size limitation would pose a problem.

[mduell]

Have you tried creating an NTFS partition on the disk with the PC (leaving some space unpartitioned) then creating an HFS partition on the disk with the Mac? I think Disk Utility will leave the MBR alone, but I have a feeling Disk Management would fark around with the HFS partition if you use it second.

If not, Partition Magic should be able to do it.

[ghporter]

I don't think Partition Magic understands HFS at all-a major problem for hybrid platform users.

[peeb]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

Correct, except the partition size limitation would pose a problem.

What size do you need? I didn't think that there was a FAT32 size problem, just a limit to the size that Windows would format them to encourage migration to NTFS?

[mduell]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

I don't think Partition Magic understands HFS at all-a major problem for hybrid platform users.

I swear it used to support HFS... but it may have been the "other" HFS (from HP-UX land)

FAT32 should do Big Mac just fine... his disk can't be bigger than 8TB.

[brokenjago]

bigger than 8TB.

One day we'll be saying "Darn, only 8 GB? I feel sorry for you!"

[peeb]

Yep. I remember my first hard disc - 40 MEGAbytes! And that was Big...

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by peeb 

What size do you need? I didn't think that there was a FAT32 size problem, just a limit to the size that Windows would format them to encourage migration to NTFS?

Oh, is that how it works? I should be okay then.

Thank you all.

[peeb]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

Oh, is that how it works? I should be okay then.

Thank you all.

"Windows XP and Windows 2000 limit partition creation to no larger than 32GB on FAT32. This limitation is by design: Microsoft wants you to use NTFS for large drives. If you use Windows Me or Windows 98 to format a drive, XP and Win2K can use a FAT32 partition larger than 32GB; however, these OSs can't create the partition."
Windows Article - Welcome

[sieb]

There is a 4GB file size limitation with FAT32.
You can try using GParted: GParted -- LiveCD It won't create HFS+, but you can do that in Disk Utility then use Gparted or Windows to format the remaining space to NTFS.
I have NTFS, Fat, and HFS+ on one external firewire drive.
Or use Macdrive from within Windows.

[brokenjago]

Nevermind.

I'm an idiot.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by peeb 

"Windows XP and Windows 2000 limit partition creation to no larger than 32GB on FAT32. This limitation is by design: Microsoft wants you to use NTFS for large drives. If you use Windows Me or Windows 98 to format a drive, XP and Win2K can use a FAT32 partition larger than 32GB; however, these OSs can't create the partition."
Windows Article - Welcome

That's one way to spin it. Here's another: When they wrote the utility, 32GB was an unimaginably huge volume. By the time a 32GB volume became practical, they had long since deprecated FAT32 in favor of NTFS.

[ghporter]

I think Mark has a better take than peeb. FAT32 was devised a LONG time before multi-gigabyte drives were common.

[peeb]

Originally Posted by mduell 

That's one way to spin it. Here's another: When they wrote the utility, 32GB was an unimaginably huge volume. By the time a 32GB volume became practical, they had long since deprecated FAT32 in favor of NTFS.

That is incorrect. See below from Wikipedia. Earlier versions of windows can format larger than 32gb. The 32gb limit was introduced deliberately. Microsoft admits this.

FAT32 was introduced with Windows 95 OSR2, although reformatting was needed to use it, and DriveSpace 3 (the version that came with Windows 95 OSR2 and Windows 98) never supported it. Windows 98 introduced a utility to convert existing hard disks from FAT16 to FAT32 without loss of data. In the NT line, native support for FAT32 arrived in Windows 2000. Windows NT 4 supported FAT32 with free driver by Winternals company, later acquired by Microsoft.

Windows 2000 and Windows XP can read and write to FAT32 filesystems of any size, but the format program on these platforms can only create FAT32 filesystems up to 32 GiB. Third party utilities are available which can format larger FAT32 filesystems. Thompson and Thompson (2003) write[7] that “Bizarrely, Microsoft states that this behavior is by design.” A Microsoft knowledge base article[4] indeed confirms the limitation and the "by design" statement, but gives no rationale or explanation. However, a Microsoft TechNet article states that the 32 GiB limit was an arbitrary limit imposed because many tasks on a very large FAT32 filesystem become slow and inefficient.[8] Peter Norton's opinion[9] is that “Microsoft has intentionally crippled the FAT32 file system.”

The maximum possible size for a file on a FAT32 volume is 4 GiB minus 1 Byte (232−1 bytes). For most users, this has become the most nagging limit of FAT32 as of 2007, since video capture and editing applications and some other software can easily exceed this limit. Most new Windows machines now ship with NTFS and thus avoid these problems, but those who run dual boot systems or who move external data drives between computers with different operating systems have little choice but to stick with FAT32, or to install the FUSE library (on Linux) together with the NTFS-3G application. (although between Windows and Linux it is possible to use ext2 or ext3 through the use of external drivers such as ext2 IFS).

[ghporter]

Quoting Wiki? How about "from the horse's mouth?" Microsoft's "Description of the FAT32 File System" Or the FAT32 File System Specification. Or this one is really good: Limitations of the FAT32 File System in Windows XP.

"Earlier versions" of Windows than WHICH version? FAT32 was developed for and released with Win95. Before that was FAT, with its entirely stupidly small volume size limitation. And remember that XP was developed from Win2K, which came from NT4. The formatting tool in XP is the same code as the one in Win2K, which came out...ummmmm....around the year 2000? Yep! And what was the largest size drive available to the general public then? At that point in time, a 32GB drive was indeed "huge."

You are right that FAT32 limits file sizes to 4GB. But how often does one need to manipulate files that size? Not very often for me!

[Big Mac]

If XP doesn't support >32GB formatting for FAT32 but ME and 98 do, then it's rather obvious (IMO) that M$ crippled the formatter in XP.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

If XP doesn't support >32GB formatting for FAT32 but ME and 98 do, then it's rather obvious (IMO) that M$ crippled the formatter in XP.

NO, they just didn't bother to build a NEW one for XP, and instead used an INSTALLER Formatter that was identical to Win2k's and almost identical to NT4's. Why would they do MORE work to give the customer less, when they could simply recycle old code and achieve the same end-not supporting large partitions in the XP INSTALLER.

[peeb]

Right, but the point is that Microsoft had the code for formatting fat32 larger than 32gb, but chose to limit the maximum size in order to encourage migration to NTFS, which at that point was their preferred format. The relevant fact here is that FAT32 supports larger than 32gb, it is XP and 2k that do not support formatting that size (they will read them). Previous versions of windows allowed formatting of larger discs.

[bloodshot]

Has anyone actually tried formatting a large FAT32 disk? It works just fine. I've been using a 250gb HD formatted as FAT32 for a couple years as a cross platform backup drive. Never had a problem.

[Big Mac]

That's all I needed to know. Thank you again.

[redesigner]

Try iPartition - t has a huge list of cross-platform partition options.
And yes, FAT32 can go larger than the limit being bandied about here.
I use Win2003 Server to partition my drives, and I had to partition one
recently to use with the new Airport Extreme BaseStation.

[Big Mac]

I think I'll stay with the free solution (Disk Utility) for now reddesigner, but thank you for the recommendation and advice.

[sieb]

Some of the more important points left out of this argument -
-FAT32 can become notoriously fragmented on large volumes
-Is not journaled like NTFS or HFS+
-Does not support file level permissions/ACLs (only folder level), or metadata.

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by sieb 

Some of the more important points left out of this argument -
-FAT32 can become notoriously fragmented on large volumes
-Is not journaled like NTFS or HFS+
-Does not support file level permissions/ACLs (only folder level), or metadata.

All of which is fine because I'd only use it for back-ups.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by peeb 

Right, but the point is that Microsoft had the code for formatting fat32 larger than 32gb, but chose to limit the maximum size in order to encourage migration to NTFS, which at that point was their preferred format. The relevant fact here is that FAT32 supports larger than 32gb, it is XP and 2k that do not support formatting that size (they will read them). Previous versions of windows allowed formatting of larger discs.

I think you give the "brains" at Microsoft WAY too much credit. They had code from an "NT-like" OS that they reused in another "NT-like" OS. No conspiracy, just laziness.

And this seems to be a moot discussion now, since the OP appears to have his answer...

[peeb]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

That's all I needed to know. Thank you again.

On the contrary. You must put up with endless obtuse arguments about the history of file formats.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by peeb 

On the contrary. You must put up with endless obtuse arguments about the history of file formats.

Yeah, this crowd is really good at that. But I think everyone learns at least a little from these rather tangential discussions. At least I hope they're not all pointless.