If it was a smaller drive I'd say fat32... I never had a problem using hfs+ on Linux (also Ubuntu) or NTFS on OS X and Linux. This is one of those things where there's no "perfect" answer, sadly. I'd say Linux is slightly more flexible, so go with thatever's easier for OS X to do. On Thu, 8 May 2014, Mike Miller wrote: > My son has a new MacBook Pro and I want to put some files on an external USB > drive for him. The MacBook has two USB 3.0 ports and I have a Seagate 3 TB > drive with USB 3.0. The Seagate comes formatted with "fuseblk" (according to > "df -T"), which seems to mean NTFS. > > That mostly works but I've had occasional serious problems with data loss > that I think might be caused by failure of the USB connection (e.g., my > littlest kid yanks the cord out) or system crashes. Thus, I would prefer to > use a journaling file system, but I'm not sure which is best. > > I am using Ubuntu, FWIW. > > In this case, I'll be putting files on the drive and giving it to my son, so > it is more important that the file system works well with Mac OS X than with > Linux. It looks like HFS+ can be used with Ubuntu using the package > hfsprogs, but I get the impression that it is limited and might only create > non-journaling versions of HFS+. > > Any advice? Is there another journaling file system that would work with a > new OS X box, but that I can create via Linux? It looks like we can get > ext2/3/4 to work on OS X only by adding a $40 proprietary program, and I > don't know how well that would actually work. > > I could try to borrow a Mac and do it that way, but then I'd have go figure > out in the Mac how to format an external drive for HFS+. I'd also have to > find a Mac to borrow, which might be difficult. > > Mike > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list >