Sharing disks between different architectures

Novell Cool Solutions: Question & Answer

Posted: 1 Oct 2004

Q:
Can I share disks between different architectures? For example, can x86 and ppc share a single shared disk?



A:
You can share disks between architectures. Disk storage should be independent of the machine data storage; the driver software deals with any issues there. One expert reports that he uses an ext3 volume on his x86 linux machine that his Mac can read as well; it's running OS X on PowerPC.

NOTE: if either machine is using that volume to autoload drivers, you will need to be sure it is loading the proper ones and that the other architecture doesn't attempt to do so. However, in terms of pure data storage, you should be just fine.

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