Router with USB-attached storage - does drive format matter?

[jackwanders]

I recently purchased a 3TB Seagate Expansion drive for file storage. We have three computers at home; a Macbook running Mountain Lion, a PC laptop running Vista SP1 and a PC running Windows 7.

Initially, I formatted the drive to exFAT as all three operating systems read/write to exFAT without a problem. However, I wanted to try connecting it to my router (Linksys E3200), but the router only works with NTFS or HFS+.

If I connect the USB HDD to the router, does the file format matter (i.e. will my Macbook be left in the dark if I format it to NTFS), or, like a NAS, does the router handle read/write, letting any machine connect to and read from and write to the drive?

Yes, I would just try it myself, but I've already got a few hundred GBs of data on the drive and I'd rather not waste my time copying it all back off the HDD if re-formatting the drive to work with the router means one of my computers won't be able to both read from and write to the drive.

Thanks!

[+BudMan MVC]

file systems only matters when directly connected. The device directly connected to the hdd needs to understand its filesystem. Any sort of connection over the network the file system is taken out of the picture.

be it smb/cifs/ftp/sftp/scp/afp/etc

only in the case of network connection that mimics direct access like iscsi or something would filesystem come into play. If your router is going to serve up access to the usb drive, then the router needs to understand the filesystem on the drive.. If your connecting via ftp/smb/http etc.. via the router does not matter what OS your using to connect with, nor what file systems it understands.