Mac OS file system format. How to format a flash drive so it can be read on Mac and Windows

Many of our readers who have to work in both Mac OS X and Windows sooner or later encounter the problem of file intolerance between operating systems. Indeed, a disk formatted in Mac OS is not recognized in Windows, while a disk formatted in Windows is visible in Mac OS, but as a rule, is not writable.

Thus, problems arise if you need to “transfer” a file via an external drive or “flash drive” from one system to another. In this article we will look at what file systems Windows uses, and how to most conveniently organize file exchange via .

File system (hereinafter referred to as FS) is an order that determines the way of organizing, storing and naming data on storage media. It defines the format of the content and physical storage of information, which is usually grouped in the form of files. A specific file system determines the size of the file name (folder), the maximum possible file and partition size, and a set of file attributes. Some file systems provide service capabilities, such as access control or file encryption. .

Mac OS X fully supports the following file systems:

• Mac OS Extended (including Mac OS Extended journaling and Mac OS Extended case-sensitive)
• FAT32
• exFAT

Windows fully supports the following file systems:

• FAT32
• exFAT

“Fully supports” means that the operating system can read and write from a disk partition formatted in one of the above file systems.

Note that the Mac OS Extended Journaled and NTFS file systems are fail-safe systems, and therefore they should be given preference when choosing a file system for a drive. However, as mentioned at the beginning of the article, the native file systems of Mac and Windows have poor cross-support. Thus, a disk in Mac OS Extended format is not recognized by Windows, and a disk in NTFS format is visible in Mac OS X, but is read-only - nothing can be written to it.

Therefore, for external disk drives that are periodically connected either to Mac or to Windows machines, it is advisable to use file systems that are fully supported by both operating systems. These are FAT32 and the little-known exFAT. These are not as damage-resistant file systems as Mac OS Extended and NTFS, but as a rule, they are quite sufficient for “household” use.

Surely many users have already encountered the most important drawback of the FAT32 file system - the limitation on the maximum file size, which is 4 GB (4,294,967,296 bytes). It is “thanks to” this factor that there is a refusal to use this PS. Indeed, the 4GB limit does not allow recording on such a disk, for example, video files in FullHD format, which usually “weigh” around 30GB.

The exFAT (extended FAT or extended FAT) FS, which was specially designed as a replacement for FAT32 for use on external drives such as flash drives, memory cards, etc., does not have the 4GB/file limitation. The theoretical limit on file size in this FS is 2^64 bytes (16 exbibytes), that is, there are practically no restrictions. exFAT support is available in Windows XP with Service Pack 2 and 3 with update KB955704, Windows Vista with Service Pack 1, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, as well as Mac OS X Snow Leopard since version 10.6.5.

Taking into account the above, it is exFAT that is recommended to be used on those drives that are periodically connected either to a Mac or to Windows.

In this article, I will talk about various ways to format an external hard drive (or flash drive) for full use with Windows and MAC OS. This question affected me when I bought my first MacBook Air.

Having a 500Gb Western Digital external drive, I wanted to use it with both operating systems, because... still worked frequently on Windows computers (at work and on a second computer at home). Read on to find out what methods I tried for this and what came out of it.

When buying a hard drive in a store, it will most likely be in the format NTFS, which is designed for use with Windows. Mac computers work with a different file system - HFS+.

There are also FAT32 And ExFAT, which are compatible with both operating systems. Below I will provide a summary table of these file systems.

File systems

NTFS (Windows NT File System):

• Allows you to read/write information in Windows. Read only on MAC OS.
• Maximum file size: 16TB
• Maximum disk volume size: 256TB
• AirPort Extreme (802.11n) and Time Capsule do not support NTFS

HFS+ (Hierarchical File System):

• Allows you to read/write information in Mac OS.
• To read (not write) information in Windows, you need to install HFSExplorer.
• Maximum file size: 8EiB
• Maximum disk volume size: 8EiB

FAT32 (File Allocation Table):

• Maximum file size: 4GB
• Maximum disk volume size: 2TB

exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table):

• Allows you to read/write information in Windows and MAC OS.
• Maximum file size: 16EiB
• Maximum disk volume size: 64ZiB

“So. It turns out that exFAT is the most optimal way to format a hard drive for full use with Windows and MAC OS“, you say. But let's not rush and consider all possible options. I generally like to consider “all possible options” for whatever it is related to before making a choice in any direction.

Nobody puts the question bluntly" Or exFAT or nothing at all!“. There are other solutions. Here they are!

Format the drive to NTFS and use NTFS-3G for recording in OS X.

If you don’t want to part with NTFS in favor of FAT32 or exFAT, there is a way to try to make your MAC friends with such a disk. To do this you will need a special NTFS-3G driver.

Combining NTFS-3G and OSXFuse should theoretically allow your Mac to work with NTFS partitions. I tried this method, but I stepped on a rake and got a big bump.

In order for all this to work you need to: install OSXFuse, then NTFS-3G and after all this an error will still pop up when connecting NTFS drives, which can be fixed using a patch for NTFS-3G.

In short, a method that does not initially work, but requires some kind of muddy patches, is not a method at all for me. You decide for yourself.

Format disk in HFS+ and use HFS Explorer for reading in Windows

That's it, READINGS! information from disk. There can be no talk of any recording. Although if you pay $50 for the MacDrive program for Windows, you can get full access and control of the HFS+ drive.

This method does not cause me much sympathy, because... requires the installation of third-party programs on other people's computers.

Split the disk into two partitions and use them separately for each OS

This method differs from the previous two in that instead of one partition for both OSes, you will divide the hard drive. into two parts, each for its own OS.

When I “split” my 500GB disk into two parts of 250GB each and formatted them in NTFS and FAT32, it seemed to me that “this is the golden solution!!! “You can use each disk with one or another OS, albeit with different capabilities.”

But my joy ended the moment I was unable to copy information from one disk to another and back again in any operating system. My Macbook saw both drives, but Windows only recognized one NTFS. Using an external hard drive this way didn't work for me.

Having tried the above methods, I still chose exFAT for myself. The option is also not ideal and has a number of disadvantages. Here are the main ones:

• Most likely you will not be able to connect an exFAT hard drive to your favorite TV, because... at the moment this format is only supported by Windows and Mac OS operating systems
• exFAT support is available in Windows XP with Service Pack 2 and 3 with update KB955704, Windows Vista with Service Pack 1, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, Windows 8, as well as Mac OS X Snow Leopard since version 10.6.5

To perform various manipulations with disks (split, format, clean, etc.) in Mac OS there is Disk Utility. It's intuitive to use. So, in order to create two partitions on a disk, you need to select the disk you need on the left side, and on the right go to the Partition tab and select 2 Partitions in the Partition Layout field.

After this, you can set the size for each partition, specify the names and file system type. We confirm Apply - then everything will be done for you.

• Why can't I write files to my external hard drive?
• Why is a large file not copied to a flash drive or disk?
• How to erase all data from a flash drive on Mac OS?

We will try to answer these and many other questions in this article. Let's look at the difference between file systems, their advantages and disadvantages, and also learn how to partition a disk, and many other useful points that can help you when working with drives.

ExFAT– extended FAT. ExFAT is a derivative of MS-DOS (FAT), in which the main shortcomings have been eliminated. But as before, it is intended mainly for flash drives, since operating systems cannot be installed on a disk with such a file system.

The size of a partition with the ExFAT file system is virtually unlimited, and the file size is theoretically limited to 16 exabytes (16 billion GB). The disadvantage is that not all operating systems support it. ExFAT works on computers running Windows XP SP2 or later and Mac OS X 10.6.5 or later.

NTFS– a file system used in Windows operating systems which, like exFAT, replaced the FAT system. The current version is 3.1, which is used in operating systems from Windows XP to the present day. The maximum disk size is 16 exabytes, and the size of a single file cannot exceed 16 exabytes. those. There is no actual file size limit.

With the NTFS format, Mac OS X runs in read mode by default. But after the release of Mac OS X 10.6, it was found possible to activate the recording function using a standard driver that is preinstalled in the operating system. We will write about this in a separate article.

In the meantime, if you need to add the ability to fully work with Mac OS X with NTFS, we recommend using one of the programs:

• MacFUSE 2.0
• Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X
• NTFS-3G for Mac OS X

Partition scheme

In addition to the file system, which is responsible for storing files, there is also a partition scheme. These are the rules by which the disk is divided into partitions, as well as the code and data necessary for the subsequent loading of the operating system. This data is located in the first physical sectors on a hard drive or other storage device.

In most cases, you need to pay attention to the file system, and not to the partition scheme. The partition scheme is used when booting from a hard drive or media.

GUID (Globally Unique Identifier) ​​partition scheme– The partition scheme that all Intel-based Macs use. And also the only partition scheme that an Intel Mac can boot from.

GUID relies on advanced EFI capabilities to boot Mac OS or any other operating system that is installed on your computer. But the GUID partition also contains MBR partition scheme data (described below), which is present at the very beginning of the disk for both protection and compatibility purposes.

Therefore, if you want to make a boot disk and you have a Mac with an Intel processor, then your hard drive or any other media must be in the GUID partition scheme with the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format

APM (Apple Partition Map) partition map– This partition scheme was used by default in Mac computers based on the PowerPC architecture with a PowerPC G3, G4, G5 processor from the famous IBM company (not Intel). This is also the only partition scheme that a PowerPC Mac can boot from.

Apple abandoned this partition scheme in 2006 because, due to 32-bit counters, the maximum disk size for a 512-byte block size can only be 2 TB.

Therefore, if you want to make a boot disk, and you have a Mac on an IBM processor, then your hard drive or any other media must be in the APM partition scheme with the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format. But such computers do not support booting from USB volumes, but only from FireWire. So a flash drive is not suitable for these purposes, but only an external hard drive with a FireWire drive.

MBR (Master Boot Record)– Partition scheme, which is used by default in most PC computers (80%), including Windows-compatible PCs. You will find this partition scheme on most pre-sale formatted drives and flash drives. None of the Mac computers support booting from this partition scheme, but they can work with it.

This partition scheme with Apple equipment does not work as a bootable one, but it can be very useful to us when formatting a regular flash drive.Windows computers do not understand the GUID partition scheme, so if you need a regular flash drive, you need to check that it has an MBR partition scheme and is in FAT or exFAT format.

We looked at examples of how to format disks, change the partition scheme, split disks into parts, and much more.

Its creators are to blame for the emergence of the myth about the primitiveness and worthlessness of Mac. They did their job too well. The Mac system was more complex and interesting inside than all the popular systems of that time. Outwardly everything was very simple and it just worked.

Why does the user need to know the details of the anatomy and physiology of his personal assistant?

The worst kind of “experts” are amateurs who have grabbed the top. Those who actually mastered the topic appreciated Mac. They were not deceived by the spare simplicity of the interface; they found it very thoughtful, logical and convenient. “Today I saw what computers will be like in five years,” they said.

But the “experts” were perplexed: who needs this plastic “talking” box if it is completely impossible to understand it? There is no command line, no text files with scripts or configuration settings. There is nothing at all! Well, there’s no way to look into his soul!

Open the case? There is a sign on it: “Do not open, there is nothing interesting inside.” Someone finally opened it and, indeed, did not find anything interesting. Boards, microcircuits...

I wonder what they hoped to see there? A tiny alien chained to a microscopic control panel with a bowl of dried alien worms?

Finder and the file system

The shell of the Mac operating system from its first day to this day is called Finder. “One who finds something.” At the border of the 80s and 90s, when disk storage volumes became large, a joke arose: Finder that finds nothing, but in 1984, on a floppy disk with a capacity of 400 K, it was not easy to hide something .

This is a classic Mac application written by Bruce Horn and Steve Kaps. Bruce is a genius and a perfectionist, a “loner psycho.” No one could ever work with him on the same task. But in the fall of 1983, when there was nothing left until the last and final deadline for completing the project, Finder was “stuck.”

Steve Kaps was able to find a common language with Bruce. The problems were absolutely objective, but together they coped. In December 1983, Finder was ready to go live. That day, the Mac developers held a “Steve Kaps day” - everyone came dressed like he dressed.

According to journalists, Finder's main function was to manage the Mac's file system. Let’s add only one word to this definition: “The main visible function...”. This is an implementation of the “desktop” metaphor, with documents and tools for working with them.

The file system of the first Mac was called MFS (Macintosh File System). There was no directory hierarchy in it, it was “flat”, like a bad joke, but for a floppy disk with a capacity of 400 kilobytes, a significant part of which was consumed by the system, this was necessary.

Directories (folders in Mac terms) in MFS were actually an illusion. They were only visible in Finder. Links to all file system objects were stored in one small invisible file.

The Hierarchical File System (HFS) was written much earlier, but it was archived for a while. Up until System 3.0, Macs only used MFS.

The system floppy disk initially had two folders - System Folder and Empty Folder. In Empty Folder, the user could “put away” his documents and programs, as if in a desk drawer. By taking the desired file and dragging it to an open or closed folder. Empty Folder could be renamed. And at the moment the renaming was completed, a miracle happened: a new empty folder called Empty Folder immediately appeared on the desktop.

The file system of the very first Mac was called MFS (Macintosh File System), it was designed and optimized for single-sided 3.5-inch floppies with a capacity of 400 kilobytes, and they laughed at it. She was “flat”. It contained only a “disk” (that same floppy disk) and files. There was no hierarchy of directories (folders, if in Mac style).

Theoretically, it was possible to restore the file using a hexadecimal editor, manually changing the contents of the invisible list of files and folders, but this was beyond good and evil: it was necessary to find the lost file, correctly bring its position on the disk into a designation understandable to the “invisible file”, correct the information of the “invisible file” itself and not make a mistake anywhere - otherwise the system floppy disk would stop booting the system. A file sent to the trash bin by mistake (or for the sake of experimentation) could be returned to its place using the Put Back command in the File menu. If “the trash hasn’t been taken out yet.”

File names were intended for users, the file system used unique file identifiers (numbers) to identify them. Absolutely any symbols except colons could be used in file and folder names.

That is, if the “system font for displaying file names in the Finder” knew Cyrillic, the folder could be called “Ya. Favorites. For 1984..1987.” And the documents in it, for example, “The Tale of the Runaway Bull.”

The contents of the active (selected) window could be printed, one to one, if desired. If there was a printer. Or send by fax - if you had a modem and a fax sending program.

MFS could handle up to 20 Megabytes of disk space, or 1,400 files, at a time when the only storage available was single-sided floppy disks with a capacity of 400 K; these limits were theoretical.

File System Objects

In the previous section, I called user-visible file system objects the word “file”. This, from the point of view of Mac designers (in the good sense of the word), is a sin. There were no files on the Mac system, there were only applications, application documents and system documents.

The desktop metaphor is a kind of role-playing game.

The central element of this game were “documents”; by double-clicking on their icon, they opened, and, if the application working with them was not yet running, that was also opened. (It seems that now “click” is supposed to be called “click”, but I don’t really like this term).

You could start working with the application by double-clicking on its icon - if there were no documents of the required type on the disk or if it was more convenient. Or if the application did not have any documents at all (game, hexadecimal disk editor, etc.).

Only system documents were not involved in the role-playing game; with a few exceptions, double-clicking on their icons did not lead to any actions. They didn't hide them, and that's good. Have you ever installed a driver, for example a printer, in PC DOS? But on a Mac, the whole process consisted of dragging and dropping a system document, for example “Image Writer LQ,” into the system folder. It was possible to remove a printer from working status without deleting its valuable system document (driver) by removing its icon from the System Folder.

How did documents and applications know what icons to display them on the screen and how to open whom? After all, there were no file extensions in MFS. If you didn’t know how this is done, but asked yourself this question, I’m proud of you.

Text is stored in computers as a sequence of numbers. In the era of classic operating systems, each character was designated by a byte, a number 8 bits long. Capital and lowercase letters, punctuation marks, numbers, spaces, etc. And also “non-printing” symbols like “line return”, “beep”, “go to next line” and the like. Much more wasteful encodings are used these days, but I won't tell you about them.

The Macintosh team engineers came up with a data type, OSType, whose value was a number but was displayed on the screen as a sequence of 4 letters. OSType was used in the Mac system to mnemonic designate a variety of entities.

The file type was displayed by two OSType attributes, the first of which indicated its format (Type Code), and the second (Creator Code), if the file was an application, stored the APPL mnemonic if the document was the type of the application that created this document. These are not all possible options for the “creator”; the rest (system documents, drivers, etc.) are not of interest to us.

No matter how a user-visible file ended up in MFS or HFS storage, the system immediately entered information about its attributes and icon into a special file that was not visible to users. Double-clicking on a document enabled an algorithm to find the creator of that document - an application with a file type equal to the creator of the file. If there was no such thing on the disk, we looked for an application that could work with this type of document.

Conflicts? Happened. But much less often than in PC DOS. On the Mac, a file type was indicated by eight characters instead of three in PC DOS. Uppercase and lowercase letters in the Mac file type designation were different, and no one prohibited the use of any characters as unique values.

Multitasking

The first Macs did not support . At any moment, one program was running on the computer, either application or system - that is, Finder.

Meanwhile, during the Mac development process, the need for utilities that were always at hand quickly emerged. Calculator, alarm clock, map of the current keyboard layout and much more.

A solution has been found. They called it Desktop Accessories, or DA's. Desk accessories. By their nature these were special type drivers. They lived in RAM allocated to the running application. It was possible to launch any number of them, but it could easily cause damage to the application hosting them.

DA's were accessed from the Apple menu, the content of which did not depend on the running application. DA was written not only by Apple, but also by third-party developers.

To be continued.

Hi all. Recently I wondered how to organize file exchange between operating systems. Let's say I want to install three main operating systems on my laptop at once: Linux, Windows and Hackintosh. Each OS is intended for its own tasks: Linux - for work and programming, Windows - for games, and hack - just for various experiments.

Since I create educational videos about Linux, it is more convenient for me to work on it. But I want to try editing it in the “final cut.” I really liked the idea of ​​a magnetic time tape.

So, the task is this: you need a partition on the system drive, and with a file system that is supported for reading and writing by all of the listed operating systems. This section will store files downloaded from the Internet and inter-operational projects.

How have I solved this problem before? Previously, I only used Windows with Linux, so the problem of exchanging with apple os did not arise. Of course, I wanted to use the open and native FS for Linux - ext4. But it’s not easy to mount it on Windows. You need to install the free (but proprietary) Paragon ExtFS for Windows. And it would be fine if it worked, but unfortunately this software damages your Linux partition. I hit myself a couple of times, and all desire to use it disappeared.

But the Windows FS under Linux can be read and written without problems. You just need to install the ntfs-3g driver. He works in userspace. The file system is proprietary, but the solution works.

Now I also want to use hackintosh, and I want to figure out what other options there are for solving this problem, besides ntfs.

In fact, there are few options. Let's figure out what file systems there are, and which of them are more or less universal.

Fat32- the well-known ancient fs is the most universal in terms of portability, but also the most wretched in terms of restrictions. It was developed a long time ago and does not support files larger than 4 GB. Proprietary. Not suitable for my purposes.

Ntfs- native FS for Windows, proprietary. Linux, as I wrote above, supports it using a third-party driver (ntfs-3g). Mac does not understand it natively, although you can install the appropriate software. There are several options, both paid and free. I don't like any of them. ntfs-3g works in userspace (with slow speed), and paid solutions are paid.

Hfs+- one of the worst fs ever created. Native to Mac OS, but not at all universal. You can mount it on Linux, but for Windows, again, there are paid solutions - in flight.

Ext4- one of the correct fs, native to Linux. But in terms of mounting in non-native OSes, there are problems again. They are again asking for money for paid solutions for Hackintosh and Windows. There are also free solutions, for example ext2fsd, but this driver cannot write to ext4. In flight.

UDF- one of the correct fs, supported natively by all operating systems. This fs would be the best option if not for apple. Initially, udf was created for optical media, but it can be safely used on a regular hard disk. BUT! Due to the fact that Yabloko did not implement support for this fs from the section, the entire idea is cancelled. Even the latest Mac OS X supports this fs only if the entire block device does not have a partition table. There is a format-udf script on Github that can prepare the media in a special way: mbr is written in the initial data block, indicating that the section begins right where the mbr itself is. Those. The drive seems to have both a partition table (what Windows understands) and, it seems, without a partition table. This method assumes that the media will be external, but I need to make an exchange partition on the internal drive. So this option is also in flight.

exFat- proprietary, but works natively in both Windows and Mac. This is very good. What's in Linux?

Brief history:

This fs was used for sd cards on androids, and there we have a Linux kernel. Manufacturers implemented the exfat driver for the Linux kernel and did not show it to anyone. But someone on the Internet leaked their code to GitHub. It was clear that this was theft, and in this form the code could not get into the kernel. However, in this code the community found pieces of gpl code, which, of course, required the disclosure of all sources, i.e. This was already theft from the community by Samsung. After some time, Samsung released this code under a gpl license.

On Linux, you can mount exfat either using the exfat-fuse driver or using exfat-nofuse. Of course nofuse is better as it will work faster. But it will have to be collected every time the kernel is updated. Fortunately, there is a dkms mechanism to automate this task.

Let's sum it up

I stop at exfat. Yes, it's proprietary, but there's nothing you can do about it. But everything works natively, and there are no “dances with a tambourine”: all three operating systems have native support and the ability to install this FS on a partition. There is no 4 GB limit. Overall, this solution is quite simple.

I hope you learned something new and choose the appropriate option based on your needs.