External drive format

[lamina]

I have a 160gb external USB drive. I currently have it formatted FAT32, which only supports files up to 4gb. I have files that are bigger than 4gb, and I use the drive between Windows and Mac computers.

Is it possible to convert the drive to NTFS while keeping the files intact? Also, dumb question, will Mac OS recognize NTFS?

 

[jeremy.king]

Is it possible to convert the drive to NTFS while keeping the files intact? Also, dumb question, will Mac OS recognize NTFS?

Convert the filesystem to NTFS using your PC. http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/convertfat.mspx

For all intents and purposes, NTFS volumes are READ-ONLY in OS X.

If you wish to read/write from both platforms and require support for files larger than 4GB, then you can format the drive as HFS+ (files will be lost in this case) and invest in a copy of MacDrive for your Windows machine.

 

[Schroedinger]

I will second the macdrive suggestion. I've been using it on my Thinkpad to access hard drives formatted for and primarily used with my mac. And there are some honkin huge files on it.