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Which file system to use in between OSX and Linux

I'm replacing the optical drive on a Macbook with an HDD and plan to use half of the new drive for Linux. The other half I want to use for storage that both Linux and Mac OS should be able to access.

Which filesystem do you recommend I use?

Community
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oivvio
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2 Answers2

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OSX supports (for read/write access without special workarounds)

  • HFS plus
  • UFS
  • FAT-32
  • FAT-16

Linux supports FAT-32 and FAT-16. It's support for UFS seems less than universal (or perhaps UFS varies somewhat between other operating systems implementations). I believe Linux also supports HFS plus but you must disable journalling and there may be other problems.

Therefore I would use FAT-32

RedGrittyBrick
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I assume that when you say "access" you mean both r/w and you probably want to be able to set permissions and do everything else you can do on your regular HDD.
Linux supports more file systems than OSX, but there is a smaller overlap than you would think.

The file systems OSX "officially" supports are:
UFS HFS+ FAT 16 and 32

Linux is not really compatible with UFS. While it is compatible with HFS+ you have to sacrifice stability for it. FAT32 is not case sensitive which is a day-to-day user-level problem for OSX and linux users who are used to it being case sensitive. It also lacks a number of features that modern file systems have like symbolic links and journaling.
I'd recommend ext3. That is the default file system for quite a few linux distros for a while and is compatible with OSX as well.

Yitzchak
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