Which file system to use for portable hard drive shared among different operating systems?

Solution 1:

The option for the most coverage is the FAT32 file system. But you won't be able to create files larger than 4GB.

If you use NTFS (Windows format) then Mac systems will be able to read it but cannot write to it unless third party software is installed. MacFuse and NTFS-3G will let you have full access to NTFS volumes on a Mac system.

Update:

NTFS-3G Stable Read/Write Driver - Apparently, NTFS-3G also supports Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, NetBSD, Solaris, Haiku, and other operating systems.

Enjoy,

Robert C. Cartaino

Solution 2:

use ext2 and put the drivers to access it from non linux systems on a device partition in fat 32 not only will you have >4g criteria sorted but more important you'll have file atributes