External HDD Advice?

[Bias X]

Currently looking into getting a external HDD.
Going to get a Seagate GoFlex 1.5 TB because
1. They offer a free program that costs about $30 dollars otherwise that lets me read/write on PC or Mac.
2. All external HDD's have issues, i merely chose Seagate over WD because of the program. That and they happen to let me choose HFS+ right out of the box.

So my question is which shall I go with? The HFS+ or NTFS? Whichever I chose I receive the program for the other system.

The main reason I wanted to get this is because most of my music is stored on my PC, I've been using my Macbook Pro as of late to download music because I synced my iPhone to its iTunes. I did do a little trick to let me sync between both, but it creates problems, especially with iTunes bought music. It erases all my apps and puts on whatever apps I had when I synced my older iPhone 4 when getting on my PC (even with Sync Apps disabled). My store bought music no longer works when I sync between both either. I have to erase it, resync it, and hope that I don't have to get any music off the other ever again.
All of my movies are also on my PC because of the larger HDD. Don't want to waste to much space on the Mac.

The dilemma I'm running into now is that most HDTV's and PS3 don't use NTFS or HFS+ you have to either create a separate partition or partition the whole thing into Fat32, which doesn't allow over 4GB files. There goes any hope for watching HD movies through this thing. The weird part is, Xbox 360's do recognize HFS+ just so users could listen to iPods. So i could potentially watch any HD movie through a 360 on a HDTV, an easy enough work around.
Problem, if i decide to take this anywhere, lets say to my parents house, on a trip, over to a friends house, etc. Most people don't have mac's and in rare cases a 360. Leaving me to have to lug around my MBP wherever I go.

I'm asking you because maybe someone has some other side I'm not looking at.

 

[anon(4698833)]

Do yourself a favor and go buy a Western Digital Live TV unit and never worry about formatting the files again if you want a media hub that doesn't involve your computer. You can get them for around $80...and they are infinitely worth it. They also act as a wireless hub, so you can move things to and from the hard drive that is connected to it wirelessly (in my network I'm able to move things at about 40mbps wirelessly, but I'm hoping router technology improves to where this can be greatly increased in the future).

 

[Bias X]

Get that with a external HDD?
It would obviously resolve the problems of having to partition the external into 3 different drives and having 1 of the same file on each to watch movies on TVs, and gaming consoles. Seagate enabling the read/write program only helps me keeping it one format.
But I would still need a external HDD to keep my iTunes library and Movies on, my MBP can't handle the data with only a 500GB storage and my PC doesn't have the mobility.

 

[anon(4698833)]

Yes, with the HDD...as far as which HDD you get (as you asked before), I've owned pretty much every major brand of hard drive and honestly, they've all been fine in many aspects and crap in some aspects, we actually purchased a LaCie thunderbolt hard drive not too long ago and it died about 2 weeks after we started using it, no idea what the failure was but they replaced it with another one and it has been fine (granted, we've only had the new one for about a month, lol)...i guess my point is you can spend big bucks or sale price on a hard drive, its all a big crap shoot.

 

[Bias X]

Thanks for the tip, I'm really glad you brought this to my attention.

 

[Rene Ritchie]

I use a Drobo formatted to HFS+


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