For instance, a Windows client that is accessing a served HFS+ disk that is served from a Mac OS X computer (a 'shared' disk across the network) can write to that disk if the server has granted permission. Limitations can be bypassed by serving a disk from a server for which the format is native. The Mac OS implementation is available at Sourceforge the Windows implementation is available here.Īnother important distinction that should be noted is that all of the above is based on disks mounted under the given operating system. This file system is not natively supported in either OS X or Windows, but free extensions are available for both operating systems that allow basically full read/write utilization of this filesystem on both OS X and Windows. It features many of the same creature comforts as OS X, including a journal and the ability to use large files (e.g. Also, as with NTFS, this file system does not support POSIX and permission / ownership errors could arise when files are moved back and forth between this file system and a POSIX-compliant file system.Įxt2 is a relatively modern filesystem that is used primarily in Linux environments. It has notable limitations, including difficulties with files of size larger than 4 GB. Mac OS X supports this format for both reading and writing, as does Windows. However, it is still widely used as almost all Flash-based drives use this format. Windows has complete read/write capabilities for this format.įAT32 is a legacy file system in the Windows world. It has no capabilities to write to an NTFS drive. Mac OS X has read only support for this format.

It should be noted that it does NOT support POSIX permissions or ownership. This is a journalled file system with good support for large files. Most Windows systems use principle partitions with this file system. This is the current preferred file system of Windows (beginning predominance circa Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000, and including Windows XP). Windows has no native support for this format, but third party tools such as MacDrive allow for limited read/write support on Windows systems. Mac OS X systems can also only boot from hard disks formatted in this system (as well as bootable optical media). Mac OS X is capable of mounting these volumes for reading and writing, and has full capabilities to utilize them. It is a journalled, relatively modern file system that supports POSIX permissions, and features at least limited automatic defragmenting of files. This is the principal file system of Mac OS X.

Setting up wd passport for mac