No filesystem sharing across Unix/Windows ...

The advent of large drives plus USB has resulted in an interesting capability for those of us who have multiple computers all running different operating systems. If we format these large drives with a filesystem that all the OSes can read/write to, we can take these large drives, wrap them in a USB enclosure, and use them across all these different computers. This is great for things like using one computer to scan in or upload photos from a camera, then taking that drive and editing them on a different computer running a different operating system. For example, support for scanners, cameras, and other hardware is usually better on Windows systems, but perhaps image editing tools are preferred on Macintosh systems. Having one large detachable drive enables images to be uploaded to one big drive, then all edits can happen on the same drive, even though multiple computers are involved in the process. This is a big time-saver.

Except that it doesn't work on drives larger than 120GB. Unfortunately, the only filesystem that is both readable and writeable by Windows, Macintosh, and Linux/BSD/Un*x systems is good old FAT32. And FAT32 cannot be used with partitions greater than 120GB. Even five years ago this was probably considered more than enough space ... unfortunately, nowadays, anyone who has a 7megapixel camera and who shoots in RAW will quickly find out that 120GB holds only a few months' to a year's worth of pictures (depending on how frequently pictures are taken). Same goes for anyone who wants to share MP3's across multiple computers ... say, ripping them on OS that is less susceptible to copy-protection viruses, then using them on a computer at work.

All other options unfortunately do not work across Windows, Macintoshes, and Un*xes. NTFS is the preferred filesystem to use on Windows for very large drives, but no other operating system besides Windows can write to it in a useful manner (BSD and Linux machines can overwrite existing files ... IF the files stay the same size!). Windows can't read any of the other filesystems.

So the only choice left is to either split up a large drive into multiple smaller partitions, each formatted as FAT32 partitions, and manage file storage across those partitions. Or dedicate one machine to being a file server, and have all machine connect to that machine via the network. But that requires a lot more work to setup. I expect more products like this one, the SimpleTech network-attache storage drive to show up and try to address this issue. Unfortunately, even if file servers become easier to setup, they're still not as portable as using a USB drive, and wouldn't make it any easier to share multimedia files between work and home, for example.

And one last note about using FAT filesystems on non-Windows systems: Microsoft won their patent on FAT, so technically now any non-Microsoft OS must license FAT from Microsoft if they want to be able to read/write FAT-formatted drives. This affects not only USB hard drives, but also any type of removeable media, such as Secure Digital and Compact Flash. Fun fun.