CODEWITHSUNDEEP
macosfilesystemslarge-filesntfsfat32
tomfanning
tomfanning

Reputation: 9660

Best file system to transfer 5+GB files between OS X and Windows on removable media

I need to transfer DVD image files between a Windows XP computer and a Mac running Leopard.

The machines are not connected via a fast network, and I have a few USB drives floating around that I want to use, e.g. 8GB flash, 60GB and 250GB USB hard drives.

Sometimes the files creep above 4GB (the maximum size of a single file on FAT32), and I've had no luck with NTFS on Leopard. I'm not aware of any drivers for XP/Vista that support Mac file systems like HFS.

Anyone got any suggestions as to what file system would best suit here?

Thanks Tom

Upvotes: 4

Views: 4185

Answers (4)

fguillen
fguillen

Reputation: 38772

Formatting to exFAT worked for me, it suppose to have some limitations with old-windows but is not my case.

Upvotes: 0

ewalshe
ewalshe

Reputation: 3694

You could use split on the Mac to divide the files up into 2GB fragments and then recombine the fragments on Windows using copy.

split -b 2048m file

copy xxa + xxb file

Upvotes: 4

Loïc Wolff
Loïc Wolff

Reputation: 3312

What did you try for NTFS on Leopard?

It's pretty simple:

  1. install MacFUSE and NTFS-3G driver.
  2. ???
  3. Profit.

Upvotes: 6

frankodwyer
frankodwyer

Reputation: 14048

You could try a linux filesystem, e.g. with e2fs on mac (I've only ever tried reading these however). There are drivers for windows.

Alternatively you could use the split utility on the mac to cut the file up into smaller chunks, and recombine them on windows.

Upvotes: 3

Related Questions