External Hard Drive For Mac And Pc Interchangeable

External Hard Drive Interchangeable Between Mac And Pc
Hard Drive For Macbook
External Hard Drive For Mac And Pc Interchangeable 2019
External Hard Drive For Mac And Pc Interchangeable

In this guide to the best external hard drives for Macs, we look at the top devices for plugging in and expanding the storage space of your Mac or MacBook. While there's a lot to love about Macs. How to Format a Hard Drive For Both Windows and Mac. Want to use one external drive for both your Windows PC and your Mac? One hurdle you'll face is that, by default, these platforms use. May 09, 2019 The Best External Hard Drives for Mac in 2019. Buying an external hard drive for your Mac is not all that different from buying one for your Windows. External hard drives is a must essential tech carry for people who need extra storage for their laptops and pc’s nowadays. There are several external hard drives available on the market based upon their sizes, types i.e. SSD or HDD, compatibility with various operating systems like Mac Windows Linux.

External hard drives is a must essential tech carry for people who need extra storage for their laptops and pc’s nowadays. There are several external hard drives available on the market based upon their sizes, types i.e. SSD or HDD, compatibility with various operating systems like Mac Windows Linux. Oct 04, 2011 Where can you get the information to reformat the hard drive to FAT32 so it is compatible with PC and a mac? I need it to be interchangeable as I transfer a. The Best External Hard Drives for Mac in 2019. Buying an external hard drive for your Mac is not all that. Includes USB 3.0 and USB-C cables. Android-, Mac-, and Windows-compatible.

If you have both Windows and Mac computers in your office, it's important to understand their different storage requirements before buying an external hard drive. Both operating systems use different formats for reading and writing to a hard drive. The only hard drive format that can be reliably used by both is called FAT32, or MS-DOS FAT as it's called on Mac computers. Even if your external hard drive doesn't come pre-formatted in FAT32, you can format it yourself using either a Mac or Windows PC.

FAT32

The FAT32 format is compatible with both Mac and Windows operating systems. FAT32 has a few disadvantages. It can't store any single file larger than 4GB. It's more prone to disk errors and its larger cluster sizes make its storage slightly less efficient than other format types. However, if you want to read and write files from a Windows and a Mac computer to the same external hard drive, this is usually your best option.

Other Formats

External hard drives formatted specifically for Windows usually use NTFS. Mac OS X can read NTFS drives but can't write to them. Unlike FAT32, NTFS supports Windows file permissions and is more stable. External hard drives designed specifically for Mac computers are usually formatted in HFS+. There are tools available online that allow you to write to NTFS from Mac OS X and tools that allow you to write to HFS+ from a Windows computer, but these tools can be difficult to manage and require some technical expertise. Microsoft's successor to FAT32, exFAT, is compatible with recent versions of Windows and Mac OS and removes the 4GB limitation, but brings its own set of trade-offs (see Resources).

Formatting From a Mac

If you want to format a blank external drive from a Mac computer, launch the Disk Utility, located in the Applications Utility folder. After you select the drive, click the 'Erase' button at the top of the window, and then select 'MS-DOS (FAT)' from the Format menu. If you want to only format a portion of the hard drive, click the 'Partition' button and then use the controls to select a partition size and which format you prefer. If you select a Mac OS format for the partition, it won't be readable from a WIndows PC.

Formatting From a PC

To format a blank drive from a PC, you can use the Windows 8 Disk Management Utility. To open this utility, right-click the bottom-left corner of the desktop and select 'Disk Management' from the menu. After you locate the drive in the list on the left, right-click its name, select 'Format' and then select 'FAT32' from the File System menu. To format only a part of the drive, create a new partition on the drive, right-click the drive name and select 'New Simple Volume.' The New Simple Volume Wizard opens to guide you through the process. Any partition you make that is not in FAT32 is visible from a Mac computer, but the Mac can't write to it.

External hard drive for mac and pc interchangeable seagate

References

Resources

About the Author

A published author and professional speaker, David Weedmark has advised businesses and governments on technology, media and marketing for more than 20 years. He has taught computer science at Algonquin College, has started three successful businesses, and has written hundreds of articles for newspapers and magazines throughout Canada and the United States.

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External Hard Drive Interchangeable Between Mac And Pc

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The Windows drive in your Dell itself will be in NTFS format. As standard a Mac can read NTFS but cannot format or write to NTFS. I have no idea what format the Lacie will initially come as but for arguments sake lets say it will be HFS+ which is the standard format used by Macs. As standard Windows cannot read or write to HFS+ drives.

It is possible to format a hard disk on a Mac (or a PC) as an ExFAT format. This format is both readable and writeable by both Mac and PCs. It cannot be used as a boot drive on either, nor can it be used as a Time Machine backup drive by a Mac. ExFAT is however fine for use as a transfer drive.

It is possible to get additional software for the Mac to allow it to format and read/write to NTFS volumes. See https://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/

It is possible to get additional software for Windows to allow it to format and read/write to HFS+ volumes. Seehttp://www.mediafour.com/software/macdrive/

Seagate a maker of hard disks have done a deal with Paragon Software as listed above. This deal means a Seagate drive comes already formatted as NTFS and includes a 'free' copy of the Paragon software to all your Mac to read and write to that NTFS drive. See http://www.seagate.com/gb/en/support/downloads/item/ntfs-driver-for-mac-os-maste r-dl/

I would be a little concerned over the above 'free' copy of the Paragon software in that a) is this still valid?, and b) is the version of the software up-to-date so that it still works in El Capitan on a Mac. Older versions of the software will not work in El Capitan.

Hard Drive For Macbook