Hello,

I had previously posted this on the PC forum, but as far as it seems not many PC users need (for good reasons) to move away from the NTFS format. So here it goes:

I am constantly working both on PC (Windows 7 64bit) and Mac (OSX 10.6.8). I am finding myself exchanging projects from my Mac to my PC and vice versa.
The thing is that this hard drive format difference is rather irritating.

So for my next external hard drive, I decided to format it in a file system that is compatible with both operating systems.

At first I thought of FAT32 but this format is very limiting.

What about eXFAT? Has anyone tried it? It is supposed to be compatible with both operating systems (write and read). But does it introduce any problems when streaming sample libraries or streaming multitracks? Any other things that I should know about before formatting my hard drive?

If everything runs smoothly, I wonder why people still have not adopted this format.

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Cubase 5.5 RME UFX, Asus P6T, 12Gb Corsair Ram, Intel i7930, Powercore Firewire, Asus 9400GT Silent

Wow, 160 views and not a single reply. I guess no one is using this format after all. I wonder if there is a reason for that.

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Cubase 5.5 RME UFX, Asus P6T, 12Gb Corsair Ram, Intel i7930, Powercore Firewire, Asus 9400GT Silent

I'll reply!

THen there are some good Mac Drive which will allow PCs to read and write to Mac formatted disks.
And the other way 'round is Trans Mac.

Both cost $50

I've not used them, just used DVDs and USB (fat!) sticks, when I need to transfer files from my Mac.

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PA stuff on FB

Quote Domenico:

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Wow, 160 views and not a single reply. I guess no one is using this format after all. I wonder if there is a reason for that.

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Interesting. I'd not heard of exFAT until seeing this thread.

Wikipedia reckons it was added to OSX around 10.6.5, so quite recent, in the scheme of things.

I suspect most people just use FAT32.

What advantages does exFAT offer ? Files over 2GB / 4GB sounds like the main one.

I've got an 90Gb exFAT partition on my external drive which I use without problems when I want to swap files between my Mac and PC . I created the partition using ipartition on the mac and then used W7 to format it. Haven't tried recording with it though.

Thank you for the replies. Yes, it seems that no one is using this format apart from swapping files between Mac and Pc. The big advantage is the maximum sample size that in Fat32 is very restrictive.

If it worked it would be really godsend though because you could have one external hard drive to store your libraries and swap it on your mac/pc whenever needed.

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Cubase 5.5 RME UFX, Asus P6T, 12Gb Corsair Ram, Intel i7930, Powercore Firewire, Asus 9400GT Silent