Hello Folks,

I guess since it's for audio use, this is on topic...

The last external drive (fw 400 & usb 2.0) I built was a 120gb,
formatted it with FAT16 and been happily using it shuttling between
Wintel (XP & SP2) and Mac (G4 PB & 10.3.9) platforms .

It's time for another shuttle drive and I can get a 200gb cheaper than
a 120gb but understand there's a 137(?) gb limit on the partion size.
I still need to work with both Wintel and Mac so I guess I'm stuck with
FAT16 still.

Have folks out there had good luck with partioned external shuttle
drives?

Simply checking... TIA,

Andy

I've used a 160GB drive formatted as FAT32 with OS X. It seems to work
just fine. Presumably, a larger FAT32 volume would work as well.

Andy Eng wrote:
Hello Folks,

I guess since it's for audio use, this is on topic...

The last external drive (fw 400 & usb 2.0) I built was a 120gb,
formatted it with FAT16 and been happily using it shuttling between
Wintel (XP & SP2) and Mac (G4 PB & 10.3.9) platforms .

It's time for another shuttle drive and I can get a 200gb cheaper than
a 120gb but understand there's a 137(?) gb limit on the partion size.
I still need to work with both Wintel and Mac so I guess I'm stuck with
FAT16 still.

Have folks out there had good luck with partioned external shuttle
drives?

Simply checking... TIA,

Andy

"Andy Eng" wrote in message
oups.com...
Hello Folks,

I guess since it's for audio use, this is on topic...

The last external drive (fw 400 & usb 2.0) I built was a 120gb,
formatted it with FAT16 and been happily using it shuttling between
Wintel (XP & SP2) and Mac (G4 PB & 10.3.9) platforms .

I'm under the impression that on the windows side, FAT16 partitions are
practially limited to 2 GB.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q118335/

"The 2-GB partition limit is imposed by the maximum number of clusters and
the largest cluster size supported by the FAT file system."

Therefore, you must be talking about FAT32.

The Windows limitations of FAT32 partitions are listed he

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/184006/

"Including the FATs themselves, this works out, at the maximum of 32 KB per
cluster, to a volume size of 127.53 gigabytes (GB)."

I know from practical experience that as long as the individual partition is
127 GB or smaller, that everything on the Windows side copes well.

It's time for another shuttle drive and I can get a 200gb cheaper than
a 120gb but understand there's a 137(?) gb limit on the partion size.

127 GB, see above.

I still need to work with both Wintel and Mac so I guess I'm stuck with
FAT16 still.

Unnh, that would be FAT32.

I stand corrected on the FAT16 vs FAT32 quiggle...

Steve's comment on the 160 gb drive is puzzling.

Still curious if the two partions can be kept straight. Getting
127/160 gigs out of a 200 gig drive would be an annoying waste! I'm
going to guess it depends on how good the shuttle housing's bridge card
is. Dunno... :-)

"Andy Eng" wrote in message
oups.com...
I stand corrected on the FAT16 vs FAT32 quiggle...

Steve's comment on the 160 gb drive is puzzling.

Still curious if the two partions can be kept straight.

IME, yes! Two partitiions, two drive letters.

Getting 127/160 gigs out of a 200 gig drive would be an annoying waste!

Agreed. OTOH the first 126 GB of a 250 GB drive will be *fast*!

I'm going to guess it depends on how good the shuttle housing's bridge
card
is. Dunno... :-)

AFAIK, the USB- IDE bridge card knows next to nothing about the
paritioning. It's just a messenger for sector transfers.

Simply to close the loop, I got this from another NG and it's pretty
consistent with what Steve posted...

You'll see my FAT16 & FAT32 confusion in David's answer but it still a
good answer.

LBA-48 & FAT32 makes my world go round.

Back to work...


==========begin snippet========

As you posted in your followup, you're talking FAT32, not FAT16.
(FAT16
has a 2G partition limit, and gets very inefficient when the partition
is larger than 512M). FAT32 doesn't have a 137G limit

Older versions of the ATA spec, however, does have this limit. The
most
recent ATA spec supports "LBA-48" which allows extremely large drives.
IDE interfaces that don't support LBA-48 are limited to 128GB (or 137G,

as drive manufacturers count bytes.)


When the drive is directly attached to your Mac, you can work around
the
limit with a software wedge. If the drive is in a FireWire or USB
enclosure, the IDE-FW/IDE-USB bridge chip must support LBA-48. If it
doesn't, the drive will be limited to 128G, no matter what kind of
partitions you crease.



Will my mac balk trying to access a FAT 16 partitioned external
shuttle drive? Last I checked, Macs didn't read FAT 32 or NFTS
formats. Or is this a shuttle controller card issue?


Macs can read both FAT32 and NTFS. They can not write to NTFS,
however - NTFS partitions are mounted read-only.

(This isn't just a Mac OS issue. Linux's drivers have similar issues.
As far as I know, only Microsoft Windows has an NTFS driver that
supports writing.)


-- David

======end snippet======