With HDDRIVER you exchange data between your Atari and other platforms without any additional software. With HDDRUTIL you can create several TOS/Windows/Linux/Mac compatible FAT16 or FAT32 partitions per medium. Memory cards are ideal media for this purpose, but hard drives can also be used. Exchanging data between the Atari and other platforms have never been this easy!
The following table provides an overview on the compatibility settings for several platforms. Further below there are details on some platforms.
| Platform | Possible Settings | Recommended Setting |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | TOS/Windows, MBR or GPT | TOS/Windows, GPT |
| macOS | TOS/Windows, MBR or GPT | TOS/Windows, GPT |
| Linux | TOS or TOS/Windows, GPT | TOS, GPT |
| NetBSD | TOS/Windows, MBR | TOS/Windows, MBR |
The screenshot shows files included in the HDDRIVER distribution on a Windows PC. The medium is a memory card with 4 TOS/Windows compatible partitions created with HDDRUTIL on the Atari. Windows versions older than Windows 10 on removable media only support one partition and ignore the others. With current versions of Windows there is no such restriction anymore.
With a hard drive all versions of Windows support multiple partitions per device, such as in this case 2 TOS/Windows compatible FAT32 partitions E: and F: of about 70 GiB each. To use FAT32 partitions with the Atari MagiC or MiNT are required.
A TOS/Windows compatible memory card with 4 partitions on a Mac. As with TOS and Windows, all available partitions are usable for exchanging data.
Linux only offers limited support for TOS/Windows compatible partitions in the Master Boot Record (MBR). A platform independent GUID partition table (GPT) resolves this problem. With a GPT Linux supports conventional TOS partitions of up to 256 MiB. Because of Linux limitations bigger TOS partitions are not possible.