External Hard Drive Usage between Mac and PC

Question

I have a WD Passport SE 1 terabyte hard drive that I have backed up my PC (Windows XP) files on. I want to transfer files onto my Macbook Pro (OS X) but it comes up as read only. I've been reading a lot of different forums and stories about not being able to write and how to overcome that but am thoroughly confused.
I use Mac and PC equally as much and it's important for me to be able to use the External HD between both platforms because both computers are not in the same location at all times for a home network type situation.
I like the security of the NTFS but I don't want to do anything (or add any programs) that will make either the Mac or the PC unstable and unreliable.
What do you recommend I use to be able to read/write from both platforms that will be stable?
Why doesn't Apple/Microsoft get together and make a format compatible for both OS's?
Is it better to use NTFS or HFS+? What are the advantages/disadvantages of both?
I'm not very computer savvy on either machine so I need things dumb-ed down for me to understand. My mom is also in the same situation as I am so you would greatly be helping both of us out at the same time. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You have 3 basic options to work with. Both Mac and Windows support FAT32 drives in full read/write capabilities. This solution is all many need. There are limitations to this, and the big one comes in the max size for a single file. Using FAT32, a single file has a max size of 4GB (it might be only 2GB, but I believe it is 4GB). As I said, for many this is fine, and they have a simple solution supported out of the box on both OSes.
The second option is to format your external drive in HFS+ (Mac format). Your Mac will have full read/write access, and your PC will not have any access unless you ave the read-only driver from Boot Camp loaded, or if you buy a commercial driver like the ones from Paragon, or MacDrive. Many people will not consider this option unless they work primarily with Macs and only occasionally with a PC.
The third option is to format the external drive as NTFS. Out of the box, Mac OS-X providers read-only support for NTFS drives, and there are several choices for free or commercial drivers to give you full read/write access to the NTFS drive. This option seems to be used the most by people who often work with multiple PC's and sometimes with a Mac or two. I have not seen any of these NTFS drivers that make a Mac unstable, but some of them are quite slow. In my house, we have about 10 PC's and one Mac. It is more cost effective to to put drivers on the Mac vs on the 10 PC's (at $40-80 per PC).
At this point the recommendation depends upon your environment. If you are mostly around Macs and only a small number of PC's consider using a Mac format for the external drives and buying drivers for the few PC's that need to access the drive(s). If you are more like me where you interact with more PC's than Macs, consider using NTFS and getting a free or commercial NTFS driver for your Mac(s). Also keep in mind any computer that may need to access the external drive(s), so if you need a family member to access it, will they need drivers or not? One again, with my world being about 90% PC's and 10% (or less) Macs, having the majority of the computers that have full access to the drive out of the box is the "better" choice, especially considering the other computers (the Macs) can still read the information, just not write to the drives without a driver.