I have bought an external USB disc enclosure and fitted an old disk in it. I would like to use it read write both with Linux (Suse 8.2) and Windows XP. It will hold video files which will be large, so FAT32 will not be suitable.

I had found writeups about UDF as a cross platform format. I installed the UDFTools package. Then I partitioned the disc using FDISK and run MKUDFFS to create a file system, then mounted the volume with MOUNT -T UDF. This appeared to work and certainly I can copy data over under Linux - qute fast too. A concern is that the partition type defaults to 83 (Linux native) and I can't find a type for UDF (since UDF is mainly used for CDs and DVDs).

But I have not been successful in getting the disc to be seen by Windows XP. If I leave the type as 83 then Disc Manager sees a volume with an unknown type. I tried forcing the partition type to NTFS and then XP sees the volume but can't read it.

Can anybody suggest a solution? There is a product called Disc Drive Tuneup which is primarily for Macs but appears to do what I want, but it's $. I feel if I can get the Linux side right I should be able to get XP to access the data.

I have seen same problem on my systems.
If you have separate disk or USB-drive without other partitions you can use whole drive. Like /dev/sde (no /dev/sde1). That is recognized by Windows. But if you do need to have separate partition it should be type 06 (FAT16) as I have read somewhere.

I love UDF when working with Windows and Linux computers and shared media without FAT restrictions.

The partition ID 83 is native for Linux but can have different filing systems inside.

If you want the partition accessible by both Windows and Linux what's wrong with NTFS (Type 7)? or Ext2/3 which is moutable in Windows using free third party drivers.