Using lightroom between PC and Mac with lrcat file on Ext HDD?

So basically I want to be able to open and make changes to my catalogue on either my mac or my PC by just plugging in the HDD which has all my pictures and catalogue data.

I formatted the HDD exFAT so i can read and write on both platforms regardless of file size (i shoot video with my DSLR and sometimes size goes over 4gb easily, which is the file size limit of FAT32)

Is this doable?

Is there a better alternative?

I have a Mac laptop and a Windows desktop and edit my photos on both. I use a WD USB drive to store my photo files and LR5 catalog on.

I tried this using exFAT but found that it corrupted fairly often. exFAT is meant to be used with flash drives. I was always able to recover using disk utilities but it got tiresome and sometimes worrisome as the recovery took multiple tries. I always had backups but would rather not go through the hassle of using them. According to Wikipedia, "The standard exFAT implementation is not journaled and only uses a single file allocation table and free space map. FAT file systems instead used alternating tables, as this allowed recovery of the file system if the media was ejected during a write (which occurs frequently in practice with removable media)."

My experience was that this happened fairly often even though I was very careful about ejecting the disk and cautious about moving cables while using the disk.

I switched to FAT (I know that's not what you want because of smaller maximum file size) and now have no problems.

If you decide to go exFAT be sure you have a good and often used backup procedure. YMMV.

Thanks for the quick reply...

I might consider doing the MS DOS FAT route instead of the exFAT. My photos are extremely important to me and the idea of "failure" or "crashing" seems a bit daunting for my taste. I do have a back up system altho its a bit flawed and needs improvement.