Using FAT32 drives for main backup

[Joesef o.]

Hello again everyone, ok so I've read up on this a little bit, and I already got answers, but they were a bit old answers (from a year or more ago)

So I wanted to ask again to see if there any new problems with this, or its still all ok....


I editing in FCP and CS6 on a Mac... My MBP is an older unibody (before any fun stuff like thunderbolt) but I'm using it as my dumping station....


I wanted to buy a cheap Windows PC laptop with ESATA connection to speed up my dumping times, but I will still be going to a Mac system after.


So here's what I looked up and seems fine but wanna hear it from you guys:

My plan was to - Buy cheap Windows Laptop with ESATA, Format backup drives to FAT32, dump footage from RED1.8 over ESATA to the FAT32 drives through the cheap Windows laptop. Then use those same FAT32 drive to clone to a OSJornaled drive which will then be used for major editing and converting to quicktime files

This is a good workflow for fast dumping on set, right?

Also is it ok to stay in FAT32 and use those as editing drives for footage, or will that be slow and dangerous because of the 4gig partitioning and I should stick with OS Extended format?

Thanks!

 

[Joe D'Arcy]

Hi Joesef,

My limited experience is that although the FAT32 will work on your Mac and PC, the Mac will only read files 2GB or smaller if formatted on FAT32. You will need to format to 'Extended Journal' to read larger files on the MAC.

Joe

 

[Michael Romano]

You can use the FAT32 as a way station between the PC & Mac if the only files you're moving are right from the RED Mags. The camera makes sure the files stay small enough for that workflow. You could also just format the drive as NTFS. Mac will read from NTFS but not write to it. I have not extensively tested the reliability of Apples NTFS implementation. Paragon NTFS is another option at only like $20.

You will NOT want to use FAT32 for anything other than downloading files from REDMAGS.

I would seriously check into check-summing file transfers if you haven't already.

 

[Joesef o.]

You can use the FAT32 as a way station between the PC & Mac if the only files you're moving are right from the RED Mags. The camera makes sure the files stay small enough for that workflow. You could also just format the drive as NTFS. Mac will read from NTFS but not write to it. I have not extensively tested the reliability of Apples NTFS implementation. Paragon NTFS is another option at only like $20.

You will NOT want to use FAT32 for anything other than downloading files from REDMAGS.

I would seriously check into check-summing file transfers if you haven't already.

That actually sounds like a good idea, I forgot that NTFS actually is very readable for a mac. Maybe thats the smarter way to go, and then clone that from the drive to the OS Extended. Is there any downside to useing the FAT32 method though? Since the REDmags are also FAT32 I have a feeling this is a safe way to do things since the files are already maxed out at 2gigs no matter what right?

 

[Noel R.]

Be careful if you format your external drives as ExFAT, I tried thinking that the cross compatibility coupled with the larger file sizes available would be good. It worked at first then quickly failed, luckily it was just a backup. There has been some success stories with ExFat on externals so that may not be the case for all of them. Here another thread that discussed this. In case you're wondering I was using a 500GB 7,200 RPM Seagate GoFlex Pro. So far NTFS has been working great for me on these drives. It takes me about 12 min to offload a 64GB SSD which really doesn't hinder me at all since I have 2 mags. It actually saves me time since I'm offloading and backing up at the same time, rather than waiting till the end of the shoot to do a backup.

 

[Wey Wang]

I've been using ExFat on all my external drives and they've all been working flawlessly between my desktop Win7 machine and my MBP. I have a total of 8 drives totaling 14TB.

 

[Michael Romano]

Seems like some real mixed results from people using ExtFAT. I don't really have the need all that often for cross platform delivery but when it must be Windows, I end up using Paragon to get things into NTFS.

Using FAT32 shouldn't be an issue in this particular case but it will make the drives in question unable to be re purposed without a reformat for some other use. If you regularly juggle drives around with multiple purposes it might cause a headache when you can't dump file whatever that is bigger than 4gb on the volume.

Best luck.

 

[Noel R.]

Just curious what kind of drives people are using that were successfully formatted as ExFat on external drives? Any recommendations?