What is the best drive format to share data between Mac, Linux and OS X?

Question

Note: I'm not asking how... I know that. I'm currently using Paragon Software's drivers which let you access all drive formats from all OSes (e.g. the Linux drive from OSX or the OSX drive from Win7, etc.) I'm specifically asking which is the best and why?

For instance, I want to share a data partition for documents, music and even my Dropbox account between all three OSes and I've done that between Win7 and OSX by throwing it on a NTFS partition. Just wondering now that Linux too is in the mix, if its better to set up HFS+ or linux format instead?

I'd love to share a user directory between all three, but I'm pretty sure permissions will make that impossible. However, I'm not sure.

Again, to be clear though since I'ts brought up so much below, I am not asking for compatibility with the OSes as far as access is concerned. I have Paragon's drivers for all OSes to read and write to all formats. Again, it's a question of which format is best, and why.

Answer 1

NTFS and REFS are a bad choice because Linux and Mac can't properly decode it and EXT2/EXT3/XFS are bad choices because you need custom Windows drivers for it to work.

CDFS is a bad choice because it's optimised for CDs

FAT16 and FAT32 are bad choices because they can only hold very small amounts of data ( < 4GB)

Which pretty much only leaves ExFAT (called EFS on Windows), which is readable by pretty much everyone, can hold large amounts of data and doesn't perform to badly on speed, fragmentation or corruptibility either.

Answer 2

I recommend using NTFS. Ubuntu (and most other distributions) support full read/write usage with the ntfs-3g package.
Mac OS also supports full read/write to the NTFS drives.
My second choice would be ExFAT, because you need to download a driver from Microsoft in order to use those partitions in other operating systems.

After reading up on NTFS support in Mac OS, I have found that the only viable solution for you is to use ExFAT. The only "safe" NTFS/write solution for Mac is a paid one, and I'm not sure if that's what you are looking for.

Answer 3

FAT32 is definitely the most friendly format between OSX/Windows/Linux.
It has a 4GB single file limit and 2TB partition size.

However, I don't think this is an issue at all with Dropbox. I've not had to even think about partition types and file system permissions, etc., and I sync between Mac/Linux and Windows often.

I think Dropbox will use certain features if they are available, but it doesn't stop you syncing to other file system types/operating systems.

I think it may skip some files. See: http://www.dropbox.com/help/145. But for basic files it seems to work fine for me.

Answer 4

I would use HFS+ - for one simple reason. Mac bundles. For instance if you use OS X, and Omnigraffle or Pages then that file is saved as a bundle. This is just a special directory - but for some reason it fails to work (at least for me) via other filesystems.

If for some reason you need to use the hard drive and Dropbox is not working, you can access those bundles on HFS+. But you can't on NTFS or ext4 if you manage to mount it in the other OS.

At the very least I'd pick the fs which supports hidden files with '.' format (leading dot). Also HFS+ is supported on Linux fine as long as you avoid journaling - so you will have two OS which can access that fs, and it supports massive files. HFS+ is my favorite, and my second is XFS which is only on Linux.

Answer 5

SMB shares (Samba or Windows Server shares) should work fine.

I have one OpenWRT router (could be a PC, but commercial routers spend less electricity) with external harddrive sharing between Linux, Windows, and multiple OS X version from Tiger to Lion via wireless or wired Ethernet.