[ale] Disk Format Question - Best choice for 500 Gig?

[Thompson Freeman]

Well, this probably is one I should know, but I'm feeling  
insecure and not quite sure how to chase confidence down on  
the web. Or even better, I'm full of hooie, and somebody  
here has a vastly better idea.

I've got a 500 Gig hard disk onto which I want to put the  
dv-video tapes from the past several years. This way, when  
the new camera goes to pot, I hopefully have all the new  
and old tapes of family occasions still available to me. I  
will be putting it into a firewire/usb external case so I  
can take things with me to various family sites, which run  
a wild mix of OS X, widders, and/or linux. As such, I  
expect the best format for the hard disk is a fat/msdos  
type system, and I think I want the fat32 type.

Am I nuts? Is there a better choice of format or better  
approach altogether?

Thanks in advance for both the use of your bandwidth, and  
for responses