[adifrank]

Hi. I normally work in a Windows XP environment. I use Photoshop CS4 and Adobe Lightroom to work on images.

Currently I'm at a photography residency at a photography school where they have amazing facilities but it is all MAC based. So I got an external hard drive which is supposed to be compatible with both platforms.

I haven't tried it yet. It's brand new, still in the box. Before I do anything I just want to understand a few things... maybe someone here can help me.



This is the hard drive I just purchased which hopefully will work between both platforms: [url="http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/687494-REG/G_Technology_GDRONA5001ABB_G_Drive_mobile_500GB.html"]G-Technology G-Drive mobile[/url]



1. For a hard drive to be compatible with both Mac and PC (read and write), should the drive be formatted to FAT or FAT32? From what I've understood, doing a bit of research - both will work, but I don't understand which is better specifically for image processing tasks.



2. If I were to upgrade my pc to Windows 7, is there anything I need to change? Or will the drive work with Windows 7 just as it did with Windows XP?



3. When scanning negatives on the Mac, the files are saves as TIFF files. Is there any difference between a TIFF file created with a Mac and a Windows TIFF file? The reason I'm asking is because when I save files as TIFF in Photoshop, it always asks me if to save as Mac TIFF or PC TIFF? I've never understood what the difference is. And if there is a difference, what should I do in my case?



Thanks <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' />

[Rainer]

1) "FAT" is basically a synonym for FAT12, FAT16, FAT32 ... for the drive you linked

(which is a 500GB device) FAT12 or FAT16 are simply not sufficient to address all

the space on the device, therefore, FAT32 is needed. If you format the drive with

FAT, the formatter will (likely) select FAT32 implicitely.



2) Yes, FAT(32) will work without a problem in Win7, as it did in WinXP ... but

there are restrictions (for both XP and Win7) which are due to FAT itself:

No files larger than 2GB (eventually a restriction with videofiles). No

priviledges as there are in NTFS.



3) Tiff supports various internal representations for images. One of the

very basic things that Tiff does, is to allow Intel- and Motorola- bygteordering

to be used (you will notice this in the fileheader of the Tiff file ... "MM" or "II"

are the first 2 bytes). So, a file from a Mac might (depending on the processor

used) use Motorola byteordering, whereas one from Windows will use Intel-

byteordering ... however, a program understanding the Tif-Fileformat is required

to handle both ... so you will not notice any difference due to this.



Rainer

[adifrank]

Thanks Rainer <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' />

A few more questions....

Does it make a difference if I format the drive to FAT32 using the Mac as opposed to formatting it using the PC?

If there is even a possibility that there could be a difference in performance - I'd prefer that the drive perform at its best with the Mac rather than with the PC.

Since the PC is my own personal computer - I can just sync it with the internal hard drive and work from there. But I don't have that option on the Mac which is not mine.



Also, I've been reading stuff on the web meanwhile and found some interesting things that might be relevant to my situation:



1. I read on a couple of forums that FAT32 is commonly used on small capacity devices such as usb pen drives and such. One forum post stated the following:

Do not use FAT32 on a hard drive with important data. It's much less robust than NTFS. With FAT32 there is a greater risk of corrupted data. I would only use FAT32 for small USB drives.

Should this concern me, if using a 500GB drive?



2. I also read that there's software out there such as this:

[url="http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/standard/"]My link[/url]

to enable Windows to read/edit/write on Mac formatted drives. Would this be a better solution than formatting to FAT32, taking into account that it is essential that the drive performs well with the Mac, whereas with the PC I can cope with slow performance, by just syncing the external drive with the internal drive and working from the internal.



3. I've read some stuff about exFAT, but I'm not tech savvy enough to really understand what it's all about and if it is something I could use. Is it?



Thanks <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' />

[Brightcolours]

[quote name='adifrank' timestamp='1320801707' post='12781']

Thanks Rainer <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' />

A few more questions....

Does it make a difference if I format the drive to FAT32 using the Mac as opposed to formatting it using the PC?

If there is even a possibility that there could be a difference in performance - I'd prefer that the drive perform at its best with the Mac rather than with the PC.

Since the PC is my own personal computer - I can just sync it with the internal hard drive and work from there. But I don't have that option on the Mac which is not mine.



Also, I've been reading stuff on the web meanwhile and found some interesting things that might be relevant to my situation:



1. I read on a couple of forums that FAT32 is commonly used on small capacity devices such as usb pen drives and such. One forum post stated the following:



Should this concern me, if using a 500GB drive?



2. I also read that there's software out there such as this:

[url="http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/standard/"]My link[/url]

to enable Windows to read/edit/write on Mac formatted drives. Would this be a better solution than formatting to FAT32, taking into account that it is essential that the drive performs well with the Mac, whereas with the PC I can cope with slow performance, by just syncing the external drive with the internal drive and working from the internal.



3. I've read some stuff about exFAT, but I'm not tech savvy enough to really understand what it's all about and if it is something I could use. Is it?



Thanks <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' />

[/quote]

1. No, it should not make you concerned. You will not lose files from the FAT32 formatted drive. It is not the OS you are running from this drive.

2. Macdrive works well (and fast) for HFS+ (journaled) drives (on windows). But it costs money for each PC you want to access the HFS+ formatted drive from. Like pointed out above, FAT32 has a limited address space, it can only allow for a certain number of files and a certain size of files. So, there are plusses and minusses for both options.

3. Never heard of exFAT for mac.



ps: NTFS is not an option (you probably knew that already) because Mac OS X only can read NTFS, not write to it.

[mst]

[quote name='Brightcolours' timestamp='1320847143' post='12801']

: NTFS is not an option (you probably knew that already) because Mac OS X only can read NTFS, not write to it.

[/quote]



OS X itself can't but there are several 3rd-party solutions, like MacFuse and NTFS-3G. I haven't used these for a while myself, so I'm not sure if they are Lion compatible.



However, for the intended purpose, I'd just stick to FAT32 on the external drive and make sure to always have a current backup, just in case something goes wrong.



-- Markus

[adifrank]

What about exFAT? I don't consider myself very tech-savvy... so I don't know much about these things, but from what I've read on the internet exFAT might work better that FAT-32. The Mac computer I'm working on is OSX version 10.6 and the PC is using Windows XP.



From what is says here: [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT[/url]

There is a Windows XP update that can be installed so that it supports exFAT.



Could exFAT be the best option for me? Or should I just stick with FAT32?

[Rainer]

For the second set of questions ...



1) Well, FAT32 has some tunable parameters (clustersize,

number of allocation tables, size of root-dir, etc) however, none of them

has a considerable impact on performance today, as most OSes use

caches when reading (so the first read might be slow, consequtive reads

will be fast) and (if enabled) when writing. The last one (chached writting)

can turn out to be a little devil, if you do not properly eject a drive. Ejecting

the drive will force all cached pages to be written back to the device ... ripping

the device out of the USB port can indeed lead to inconsistencies. That is why

Windows will usually not enable write caching ... that way losses are less likely.

Once data is written properly to the drive, you will not lose anymore if you

eject the drive properly after use (and if there is no physical error on the drive).



2) If the limitations of FAT are not impacting your use of the drive, I would stick

with FAT, since it can be read on almost every type of computer. The type of filesystem

will not make a performance difference, since the bottleneck is the USB-connection itself.



3) If I remember correct, exFAT has some extensions to support flashdevices better.

It shouldn't have an impact, if a real harddisk is used.



Reliability of FAT ... FAT is not a journaled filesystem (like most modern filesystems are ...

NTFS, ext4, Reiser4, xfs, zfs, hfs and the like ). This means, it is more vulnerable to

inconsistencies when the power (or connectivity) is lost while writes to the device were

in progress. So, if you accidentially unconnected the device without ejecting it properly,

you might want to run chkdsk or scandisk on it before writting to it again.



Rainer

[adifrank]

Thanks Rainer for the great explanation! <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' /> I think I understand now.



Thanks!