(Vista/XP can be capable of reading exFAT if the right updates are applied).Įither way, if you eventually need to change the format of the disk away from NTFS, your best bet is to find a way to get all your data off it and then repartition. If you need backwards compatibility at all with anything younger than OS-X 10.6, do not use exFAT.
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#Windows vm on mac read external drives windows
If you need your drive to work properly on both OS-X and Windows 7, reformat it to exFAT (also known as FAT64, but not to Windows or OS-X) otherwise your probably best off keeping it formatted for the OS the drive will most commonly run under (likely HFS+ if you?ll only be using it on a Mac from now on).
#Windows vm on mac read external drives full
OS-X 10.7 gains native full disk encryption via FileVault, but it presently lacks native ability, and as BitLocker is limited to Windows FileVault will be limited to OS-X. Otherwise, if you need full disk encryption under OS-X right this moment, I believe your only real option is TrueCrypt (open source free) or PGP (commercial/not free). If you can add full encryption back without reformatting using TrueCrypt, then that's good. Since you've said you don't have enough space for just the files, your easiest solution to use the drive on multiple platforms is to just put the drive on a Vista/7 system and disable BitLocker to remove the encryption without removing your data. Also, I?d strongly discourage using TrueCrypt over BitLocker on bootable volumes, especially of your hardware contains a TPM or you utilize Active Directory. If you don?t already have a good backup of your data encrypted on another disk, I?d recommend it. I have not had this issue with BitLocker, but I have seen it a long time ago with TrueCrypt, and it?s unplesent. Just be warned, as I recall, recovering from corruption with TrueCrypt is very difficult if not impossible (probably depends on the type of corruption). I don't recall if TrueCrypt can encrypt a volume without reformatting it though I haven't used it for full disk encryption since Vista was released. As I recall, by default they use the same cipher strength, and both use AES as the primary encryption form.
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TrueCrypt is, to my knowledge, as secure as BitLocker. If you wish to use full disk encryption between Windows and OS-X, you will need to disable BitLocker and move to open source TrueCrypt 7a which is multiplatform.