Best Format For OS X and Linux HDD? 253
dogmatixpsych writes "I work in a neuroimaging laboratory. We mainly use OS X but we have computers running Linux and we have colleagues using Linux. Some of the work we do with Magnetic Resonance Images produces files that are upwards of 80GB. Due to HIPAA constraints, IT differences between departments, and the size of files we create, storage on local and portable media is the best option for transporting images between laboratories. What disk file system do Slashdot readers recommend for our external HDDs so that we can readily read and write to them using OS X and Linux? My default is to use HFS+ without journaling but I'm looking to see if there are better suggestions that are reliable, fast, and allow read/write access in OS X and Linux."
4GB per file limit (Score:5, Insightful)
OS X UFS has a very unfortunate limit as it doesn't support files over 4 GB. Or, there was no chance, I would format everything (especially USB) as UFS.
Lack of commercial quality disk tools like Disk Warrior if a true catastrophe happens is a problem too. Of course, fsck can do good things but after a true catastrophic filesystem issue, diskwarrior is a must. That was one of the things Professional Mac community had hard time explaining ZFS community.
As Apple was truly wise to completely document it down to a point you can even write a full feature defragmenter (iDefrag), HFS+ without journaling seems to be the best option. I am in video business and I have seen it deal with files way beyond 80GB without any issues. In fact, lots of OS X users who images their drives see it everyday too.
I don't know why journaling is not implemented, it is open and documented too. If a bit hassle happens, it sure deserves it since he deals with external drives which are just fit to journaling purposes.
the question of our age (Score:5, Insightful)
who will wooosh the woooshers?
NAS device (Score:3, Insightful)
A simple NAS enclosure or NAS device might be what you are looking for. You can get a single drive NAS enclosure, and add a drive, that you can carry around just like a regular portable drive. You can move it between networks and use any connection method the NAS device happens to implement (SMB, FTP, NFS, etc). Some even let you optionally connect it directly via USB or eSATA to access the file system directly, and some may have encryption or other security features as well.
Of course, check to make sure you have permission and that connecting things to your network does not violate any policies. If connecting a network device directly to the your network is not permitted then perhaps you can add a second, dedicated, network card to the computers.
Re:UDF IS ACTUALLY A SOLUTION (Score:3, Insightful)
That is an excellent solution, and arguably the best to the OP's problem printed. UDF works on Windows, OS X, Linux. Even AIX is happy with it and can write to it. So an external drive with this on it should definitely solve the problem.