So, it is 2008 right, almost 2009? The information age started nearly 30 years ago! So why is it there isn't a file format that can work on both a MAC and a PC and can handle files larger than 4gigs?

I make 4 gigs worth of data before going to the bathroom in the morning. Shouldn't someone have figured this one out by now?

What, are you using Windows 95?

Ntfs ftw....

No, he's trying to use a filesystem that both a Mac and a PC can write to, I assume, because Windows will only work with Windows formatted disks, although IIRC MacOS will handle NTFS (and UFS, and UDF, and both Mac filesystems, and extfs, and zfs, and and and and). Additionally, some systems can treat UDF as a random-write FS but Windows isn't one of them.

There are several utilities that allow Windows to read Mac volumes. I used one not too long ago to fool with my AppleTV.

You're right there are utilities that let you view other file formats but not write to them without some limitations.

Even when you format a disk as NTFS I have seen macs have issues. Leah has a few external drives she swaps between her MAC and her PC and it can get all screwy; still if I had something that needed to be seen by both I'd use an external drive formatted NTFS.

It's just one of those frustrating things that we're getting closer to.. there are a few tools that do some integration for you, MacDrive is one I can think of off the top of my head. I have not personally tried it though so I can't vouch for it.

The reason we're not there yet is b/c OS's have different limitations on characters, size, file perms, even how they are stored at the bit level. It's just not as simple as it may sound like it should be.

The primary problem is not so much mapping between different object concepts, but that NT/Vista specifically is a) not easy to write filesystems for because the internal OS abstraction for normalized object access is not exposed to most applications and b) Microsoft themselves doesn't do the hard work for you in that regard.

NTFS is unfortunately really bad for data interchange because the Windows ACL model requires having mountains of information about all kinds of unique IDs that is not in the filesystem itself, and faking that sort of thing only gets you so far. Plenty of data interchange formats exist, but Microsoft only grudgingly acknowledges those even exist, much less supports them; NTFS is not just the first-class citizen of windows as you would naturally expect, it's more-equal-than-others at every stage of the game.

Maybe third party utilities are getting better at that, but every time I take a look at them it's pretty half-assed.

You've been able to use the ISO9660 descended data disc format (currently UDF (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Disk_Format)) on everything forever, but lots of systems do not present true random r/w access to it despite there being no specific reason why not (as an example I submitted code to one of the BSD projects about ten years ago that replaced a kernel procedure that implicitly assumed all CD media was read only).

MacDrive may have been the one I used.

Worked fine for me, copying files from Vista to Mac to add some plugins (or WTFever they're called) to the Mac movie player deal on the AppleTV (something Stage?).

Holy crap, Sanchek owns an Apple TV? We got him on our side now!

It wasn't worth wasting an HDMI cable on. It's in a drawer right now.