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I'm considering using an UDF partition to share data between Windows XP, 7, and Linux. It's more efficient than FAT32, and avoids the 4GB max file size limit. I've found it will also work with Mac OS X, more details in this questions.

However, in Windows XP, it is read-only. I'd like to write to it too. Are there any drivers that will allow this? I've found a few that support writing UDF...but they are designed for writing to CDs or DVDs, not specifically for HDDs or USB Flash drives: DLA, InCD, Drag-To-Disc.

Will any of those 3 drivers work for HDDs/USB Flash drives? Or is there another driver that will do what I want? Thanks.

Community
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davr
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3 Answers3

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I've tested DLA 5.20 and Sonic Drag-to-Disc 9.05. Neither one will allow XP to write to a UDF formatted hard drive. I have not yet tested InCD, but my guess is that it won't work with hard drives either.

The only product I've seen so far that claims to write to UDF hard drives is SAI's WriteUDF! (dead link), but it's $80.

There's also the free DVD Write Now, but I doubt it will work either. The last time I tried it, it wasn't the most stable thing in the world (not good for a program that has a filesystem driver component), and it only claims to handle UDF 2.01 writing. I'm not sure whether or not that would prove problematic.

The route I've gone personally is NTFS, along with putting the NTFS-3G for Mac installer on the hard drive. Since OS X has read-only support built in, this works well.

If you want free, cross-platform, and no file size constraints, NTFS is going to be your best bet. NTFS-3G for Mac is free and performs "well enough." The company backing the free NTFS-3G also sells Tuxera NTFS for Mac, which is supposed to be much faster. There's also Paragon's NTFS for Mac software as well, but it's not free either. At least there are options.

Ext2 will also work, and there are free drivers available for both Windows and Mac, but you have to have a secondary method of getting the drivers onto your host systems. This is also a problem for NTFS and Linux. I don't know what performance or stability of the various Ext2 drivers is like.

higuita
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afrazier
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I believe that udf is only for optical media. ntfs is supported on xp, windows 7, linux and the mac as of osx as of snow leopard. if you're on an older version of osx you can use macfuse with ntfs-3g which is an opensource project that provides read/write ntfs drivers for osx.

user4892
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Have you considered exFAT?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/955704/

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Moab
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