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I just got one of those Western Digital 2TB Passport external hard drive. Is it true that if I want the iMac running Lion on it to be able to read and write any files on the drive, and to have files greater than 4GB (which FAT can't have), then it is best to reformat immediately to exFAT before writing anything to this new drive?
nonopolarity
Posted 2012-04-26T23:18:34.957
Reputation: 7 932
related: Cross-platform file system
– phuclv – 2018-07-15T04:49:48.120Wikipedia says that you can create a UDF filesystem using
newfs_udfon Mac OS 10.5 or newer. – Wyzard – 2012-04-27T01:18:28.457Good to know. I had no idea! I presume that's what it uses for burning CDs and DVDs. I was under the opinion UDF was only used for that sort of media. – None – 2012-04-27T03:33:00.137
1UDF isn't commonly used except on DVDs, but I think people have just forgotten about it. I've been using it on my 16GB flash drive, which moves between Windows and Linux systems, and it works fine. Note that Windows XP can read but not write UDF. (Vista and newer can write.) – Wyzard – 2012-04-27T03:37:08.753
I sort of need both Read and Write for this drive using Win 7 and Mac OS X Lion... – nonopolarity – 2012-04-27T19:36:10.343
That's fine, Windows 7 can write to UDF. It's just XP that can't. – Wyzard – 2012-04-27T22:41:32.973
Is there an example usage of newfs_udf to format an external hdd as UDF for read/write? – Nick VanderPyle – 2012-04-28T04:23:27.113
3is there advantage of using UDF? such as write speed... or else what's wrong with using a proprietary format like exFAT (provided that it works fine)? – nonopolarity – 2012-06-25T08:17:47.097