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I just got my first external hard drive. I'll be using it 99.9% of the time with my OSX (HFS+) and Ubuntu 10.10 (Ext 3/4 (i think) ). What format should I format it to, to get the best performance. I only ask because a buddy of mine has an external that my MacBook can't write to for some reason.

Thanks.

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I would recommend ext4 formatting but OSX requires third party driver or application to mount the ext4 drive. – ngen Dec 22 '10 at 18:35
What are the benefits that ext4 would offer? I'd like to keep as simple as possible. – Josh Dec 22 '10 at 18:37
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Use HFS+, it's natively supported in the Ubuntu kernel, ext4 (now the filesystem preferred by Ubuntu, it seems) is not natively supported by OS X.

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Under disk utilities, is HFS+: Mac OS Extended (Journaled), Mac OS Extended, Mac OS Extended (Case-Sensitive, Journaled), or Mac OS Extended (Case-Sensitive)? Or is there a different way to format it, through terminal maybe? – Josh Dec 22 '10 at 18:47
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HFS+ is all of those. For best compatibility with Ubuntu, I'd just pick Mac OS Extended (some open-source Linux HFS+ drivers have trouble writing to journaled drives). – squircle Dec 22 '10 at 19:02
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