Another stupid network hard disk question

[ffutures]

I've been looking at the cheaper network hard disk boxes and all of them seem to be FAT32 only, not NTFS, which as far as I can tell means that there is a maximum partition size of 32gb without special software. I know that there are third party utilities for PCs that can format FAT32 hard disks to larger sizes, but will a disk formatted that way be readable from the mac, or across a network? If not, why are they advertising them as a useful storage solution?

The one that appeals if I could afford it is the Netgear Storage Central box, which comes with 2 x seagate 250gb for £180 inc VAT (in the current Misco flyer), or without drives for £70, and can allegedly hold up to 2 x 800gb. Anyone know how that one formats its disks? It's some sort of RAID controller, that's all I know. They don't say it's Mac compatible, though it's hard to imagine how it wouldn't be accessible since it's a network drive.

http://www.misco.co.uk/productinformation/~104256~WW~/index.htm

Apologies for wasting everyone's time with this, but I'm anxious to avoid mistakes.

Comments

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

The Netgear like many of the Linux-based NAS devices uses EXTFS.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Which unfortunately doesn't mean much to me - presumably a file system, but there is no Wilipedia entry for it, and every other site I looked at assumed linux knowledge I don't have.

[uk-lemming.livejournal.com]

Asumming it uses Samba as the File Sharing mechanism - that or FTP, it will take care of the disk formating problems itself.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

OIC - that makes sense.

[saranjeuhal.livejournal.com]

And because it's Linux-based it means that there's no limit. If it's going to be on the network, make it Linux-based. If it's going to be USB, then you want NTFS. Unless of course you have it an NTFS USB drive that ends up storing the MBR on the exact sector that ends up physially corrupt and loses 100Gb of files (just what happened to me).

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

My USB drive is FAT32 for some reason - and it's 40gb so god alone knows why I've been worrying about a 32gb limit.

[saranjeuhal.livejournal.com]

It all depends on the firmware of the USB enclosure and the operating system being used. In most cases, FAT32 is defaulted to instead of NTFS, but you can reformat to NTFS as long as the firmware supports it.