Flash Drive Format for BOTH Mac & PC

Question

Is there any way I can format my flash drive (scandisc) for both mac and pc? Thanks!
Jesse

Answer 1

Bottlerocket wrote:
Thank you so much! I had my doubts that a definitive solution to this problem existed. I am very grateful.
Just thought I would also throw this out as an option: "IronKey The World's Most Secure Flash Drive" (https://store.ironkey.com/personal) works on PC, MAC, and Linux (see specs for details). But at a price range of $79.00 (IronKey Personal S200 1GB Secure Drive - FIPS) to $299.00 (IronKey Personal D200 32GB Secure Drive - FIPS) this seems like a hefty price to pay, but also no need to have something like PGP on each machine.
Three reviews I found helpful were:
http://www.net-security.org/review.php?id=216
http://www.rohos.com/2010/04/ironkey-security-review-part-2/
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/index.cfm?reviewId=112356
What I don't like about what have read is the self-destruct feature. I understand it offers protection from data theft from tampering attempts or brute-force attacks, but as the PC Advisor reviewer noted "10 consecutive failed logins will leave you with an ornamental keyring" so that is actually an open door to a denial of service / denial of data attack - your data is secure but could cost you $299.00 and your data if someone had access to it in your absence and just wanted to be prankish. Yea, I know they could also disable more expensive equipment in like manner, so guess this is just more in line with a valid argument for protecting physical access to systems as part of overall security plan. In this case, maybe handcuff the thing to yourself.
Also the product does offer more of it feature set to PCs, and I would rather have equality here for the price. And although interesting, I am not immediately sold on it added features such as seemingly anonymous surfing with hardened version of Mozilla Firefox and IronKey's servers (similar in concept to using Tor network) - it may be neat and advantages in some situations but it is not a panacea of speed and complete privacy if you delve into such things.
All that being said, think it would be nice to play with and see how it works; and other manufactures are also putting out efforts in this direction so it is kind of interesting to at least be aware of it and how it might be useful and look towards its evolution. Depending on the environment, you might be better off getting a 64GB encrypted SSD, set it up on your PC and then access from your Mac via something like a virtual windows machine using Parallels for Mac (http://www.parallels.com/).
Also, may want to look at True Crypt (Free open-source disk encryption software for Windows 7/Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux) at http://www.truecrypt.org/. Much reading there, but also think there would be a solution that would just cost you your time; have read varying reports, google and you will have much to read for the next few days but may be just the ticket to meet your needs.
If you do start implementing any of this, would love to hear about how it plays out. Assume others would also.