Which DOS filesystem best for Mac/Linux compatibility?
 

Hello,

I have a flash drive that I want to use on both my Mac and my Linux PCs. Since Mac OS X can't read ext2/3 or Reiser filesystems, I guess I'll have to format the drive with a DOS filesystem (which I was trying to avoid). fdisk lists several DOS choices - which one should I use? (keeping in mind this flash drive will only be used on Macs and Linux PCs)

The choices include: FAT16, FAT16 <32M, W95 FAT32, W95 FAT32 (LBA), W95 FAT16 (LBA), W95 Ext'd (LBA), HPFS/NTFS

Which of these would be best for me, and why? Thanks.

Isn't Linux able to read/write native Mac FS?

Yves.

It will only mount HFS+ read-only. I've tried several ways. See my previous post on that here:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=497585

Thanks,

Joe

Flash drives are typically formated as FAT16 from the factory. Have you reformated the drive? fdisk creates partitions, mkfs creates filesystems.

Oh, right, I knew that. :) When I first got the drive, I reformated with the Mac as HFS+. I quickly discovered that I could not mount under Linux, so I used fdisk to partition into two: a Linux and a DOS. Then I used mkfs to format both.

Some time later, I upgraded one of my Linux boxes from CentOS 4.0 to 4.4, then decided to try HFS+ again, so I once again reformatted with the Mac. Now it will mount under Linux, but read-only. So this time I think I'll just format the whole thing DOS.

So I guess my previous question was moot, as I was confusing partitioning and formatting. If I just use mkfs -t msdos to format, that should give me what I need. (Although, ideally, I'd rather have a 'modern' filesystem (HFS+, Reiser, ext3) that was read-write compatible on both the Mac and Linux.)

Thanks,

Joe

How about this.

Now that looks promising. There is not much info on the SourceForge site. Have you used it? Is it just a matter of installing it and then the Mac will read/write an ext2 filesystem?

Thanks for the lead,

Joe

No I haven't used it, I haven't got any Mac systems. I just googled for "mac os x linux filesystems".