anyone using ExFAT drives for sessions?

[huzzam]

Hi everyone! I'm about to build a dual boot Win10/Hackintosh (Mojave), and would like my session & sample drives to be readable and writable from both OSes, so I don't have to have duplicates of everything.

The question is how to format the drives. It seems like ExFAT is the most compatible filesystem with both systems. Though it is native to neither, they both have stable read-write support. (The only other filesystem that I know of that has stable read-write on both is FAT32, which I'd really prefer to avoid.)

Has anyone here tried running sessions / sample libraries from ExFAT drives in MacOS and/or Win10? Any thoughts, or other suggestions?

thanks in advance!
~peter in athens

[ChuckS]

I've used ExFAT without any issues on session drives. I don't see any reason why there would be any issue with a sample drive. I am now using a dual boot Mac and am using Paragon Software's HFS+ on the Windows side and their NTFS product on the Mac side. This gives me access to the system drives from either environment. Currently I keep my sessions on the Mac system drive so accessing them via PS HFS+ app is no issue. They also have an APFS product for Windows.

https://www.paragon-software.com/about/products-a-to-z/

[huzzam]

Originally Posted by ChuckS

I've used ExFAT without any issues on session drives. I don't see any reason why there would be any issue with a sample drive. I am now using a dual boot Mac and am using Paragon Software's HFS+ on the Windows side and their NTFS product on the Mac side. This gives me access to the system drives from either environment. Currently I keep my sessions on the Mac system drive so accessing them via PS HFS+ app is no issue. They also have an APFS product for Windows.

https://www.paragon-software.com/about/products-a-to-z/

Great, thanks! Yes I've seen the Paragon stuff (and now that you mention it, somewhere I think I even have a license for their NTFS on Mac system, which came with some cheap hard drive at some point). I just prefer to use things that are natively supported if possible. Anyway I'll try ExFAT, and if it doesn't work well I'll try your other suggestions.

[Tim R.]

I would only caution that I've had issue with sample players (Kontakt etc) loading from ExFAT. Not sure if the problems I had have been resolved recently or not. This was a while ago.

[albee1952]

Just an opinion, but I think I would use HFS for all but the Windows drive and install MediaFour MacDrive so Windows can read the rest of the drives

[EGS]

Originally Posted by albee1952

Just an opinion, but I think I would use HFS for all but the Windows drive and install MediaFour MacDrive so Windows can read the rest of the drives

+1. I use exFAT only for a drive used specifically for transferring MAC--->WIN or WIN--->MAC. For sessions: NTFS on WIN, HFS+ on MAC. Also, MacDrive works.

[huzzam]

Originally Posted by albee1952

Just an opinion, but I think I would use HFS for all but the Windows drive and install MediaFour MacDrive so Windows can read the rest of the drives

Hmm, thanks. Macdrive is significantly more expensive than paragon hfs+... are there advantages?


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[JBlongz]

I want to offer some words of caution and suggestion through my experiences with ExFat, Paragon, and MacDrive solutions.

ExFat: While it is compatible with MacOS and Windows, the risk is that corruption can occur easily with mistakes such as unintentional disconnection and power outage. Corrupt or damaged Exfat drives are near impossible to recover, unlike NTFS, HFS, and APFS which have a log file that is used for data recovery (I have recovered terabytes of data from corruption to accidental formatting). My advice is to work directly from natively journaled/index file formats such as NTFS, APFS, HFS+, and then backup the file to ExFAT. I don't recommend working directly from ExFat...its too risky.

Paragon HFS/APFS/NTFS: I have mostly good experiences using paragon software. However, I did experience an issue this week (which led to forum hunting) using their APFS solution in Windows 11. Somehow, I had important folders missing when I plugged the drive back to Mac. I was able to recover everything using Prosoft's disk recovery software. I'm still investigating the root cause, but I remember reading that the current solutions are considered beta for APFS partitions. I use APFS for all SSDs for MacOS and HFS for HDDs.

MacDrive Currently in beta for APFS and only read capability at this time. HFS should work normally in read/write. I have used them in the past (v10) and the experience was mostly good.

Due to recent experiences I have increased my caution to stay as native as possible and using ExFat strictly for consolidating files. Its an extra step to copy back and forth, but I have realized that exfat is particularly good at doig just that....being a large, centralized storage, but not working directly from. IF YOU CHOOSE to work from this format, I recommend you have consistent backup routine depending on how much you write to it daily.

Peace

[Darryl Ramm]

Personally I would just run on NTFS and APFS and copy sessions between filesystems if needed. You can set up workflow/ways to make this easier, like copying sessions after work back to a staging area (maybe the same place archives/backups are made from). But do not use ex-FAT to run sessions from, it's not supported and will cause issues. ex-FAT is fine for *transferring* a session between systems.

[JFreak]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

ex-FAT is fine for *transferring* a session between systems.

^^ this.

And listen to this guy whenever we are talking about storage systems.