Best Format For OS X and Linux HDD?

dogmatixpsych writes "I work in a neuroimaging laboratory. We mainly use OS X but we have computers running Linux and we have colleagues using Linux. Some of the work we do with Magnetic Resonance Images produces files that are upwards of 80GB. Due to HIPAA constraints, IT differences between departments, and the size of files we create, storage on local and portable media is the best option for transporting images between laboratories. What disk file system do Slashdot readers recommend for our external HDDs so that we can readily read and write to them using OS X and Linux? My default is to use HFS+ without journaling but I'm looking to see if there are better suggestions that are reliable, fast, and allow read/write access in OS X and Linux."

Comments

4GB per file limit

[Ilgaz]

OS X UFS has a very unfortunate limit as it doesn't support files over 4 GB. Or, there was no chance, I would format everything (especially USB) as UFS.

Lack of commercial quality disk tools like Disk Warrior if a true catastrophe happens is a problem too. Of course, fsck can do good things but after a true catastrophic filesystem issue, diskwarrior is a must. That was one of the things Professional Mac community had hard time explaining ZFS community.

As Apple was truly wise to completely document it down to a point you can even write a full feature defragmenter (iDefrag), HFS+ without journaling seems to be the best option. I am in video business and I have seen it deal with files way beyond 80GB without any issues. In fact, lots of OS X users who images their drives see it everyday too.

I don't know why journaling is not implemented, it is open and documented too. If a bit hassle happens, it sure deserves it since he deals with external drives which are just fit to journaling purposes.

the question of our age

[commodoresloat]

who will wooosh the woooshers?