3.1. Sharing Files with Other Operating Systems

If you’re going to move files between your Mac and another operating system, there are some things you need to watch out for. As we discussed in Chapter 2, the AppleDouble format will sprinkle some files with odd names across the filesystem, such as ._filename files. You’ll also find a few files created in the root, such as .Trashes (see Table 3-1, later in this chapter).

The most significant problem you’ll run into is moving large files around; if you’re not using a third-party utility, the only common filesystem that Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux can read and write is the ancient FAT32, which has a limit of 2 GB per file. However, if you don’t have Windows in the mix, you can take advantage of Linux’s support for Apple’s HFS+ filesystem. Linux will mount journaled HFS+ filesystems in read-only mode; if you’re willing to disable journaling, you can get read/write support. For example, if you have an external (such as USB) HFS+-formatted drive called iPod plugged into your Mac, you can turn off journaling with: