have a external hard drive formatted for mac and windows

HAVE A EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE FORMATTED FOR MAC AND WINDOWS HOW TO
HAVE A EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE FORMATTED FOR MAC AND WINDOWS MAC OS
HAVE A EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE FORMATTED FOR MAC AND WINDOWS INSTALL
HAVE A EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE FORMATTED FOR MAC AND WINDOWS PC

So to get rid of these situations we bring here a guide that will help you to format your drive which works on both platforms and you don’t need to format and backup data every time.

HAVE A EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE FORMATTED FOR MAC AND WINDOWS PC

You don’t need to format the hard drive every time you can choose a filesystem while formatting the drive so the hard drive or USB drive work on both Mac and PC Windows and macOS filesystems are different and you might need to format the drive every time to use on both platforms. If you are tech savvy and use Windows and Mac computers frequently, then you might need to transfer data between Mac and PC. This thing is still unknown for many users but doesn’t worry it’s not complex. Then type in “Disk Utility”.Ħ) Change the Partition Layout from Current to 1 Partition.ħ) Click Options , Select Master Boot Record, and click OK.Ĩ) Name the hard drive with a name of your choice.ġ1) At last press Apply, then click on Partition.You can format the external hard drive or USB drive to make it compatible with both Mac and Windows machines.

HAVE A EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE FORMATTED FOR MAC AND WINDOWS HOW TO

How to format an External Drive in Windowsģ) Right click on unallocated or any other disk partition and select “ New Simple Volume”ĥ) Assign your external hard drive with any letter.ħ) Follow the instructions and at the end click “ Finish“ġ) Connect your external hard drive to the Mac.Ģ) Open Disk Utility. You can do this quickly by pressing CMD and the spacebar at the same time.

HAVE A EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE FORMATTED FOR MAC AND WINDOWS INSTALL

To do so you also have to install third-party software like Paragon HFS+ for Windows. Windows 7 can’t read nor write files to external drives that are formatted as HFS. But we advise to just format it to “FAT” file system as it’s less time consuming and easier. So in the end, it’s possible to make your NTFS external hard drive compatible with Mac. To make your Mac compatible writing on NTFS you have to get and install a third-party driver. Macs that run Snow Leopard or Lion can read data from drives that are formatted as NTFS. The default file system for Windows is NTFS (New Technology File System).

exFAT – a newer file system optimized for flash devices and has improved performance overFAT32.

FAT32 – a file system normally used on USB disks.

This is one of the most widely recognized file system formats.

HAVE A EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE FORMATTED FOR MAC AND WINDOWS MAC OS

The resulting FAT32 file system will be compatible with all versions of Mac OS X, and Windows including Windows 10 back to 95. Once you have done with formatting, your external hard drive will be able to write and read files from both a PC and Mac. Many still choose FAT32 over exFAT despite its slower performance, as it’s also compatible with Linux Os and is supported on many gaming consoles. If you have to work with large video clips, games or any other kind of massive files, FAT32 may not be the best choice. FAT32 has a maximum 4GB file size limit, but exFAT can work with files as large as 16EB, that’s more than you will ever need. However, each of these filesystems has their own pros and cons. You can format your external hard drive in both – exFAT and FAT32. Just keep in mind if you want to use your drive also for OS X’s Time Machine backups, we advise you to format your drive through Mac because there is an additional step to make drive compatible with “Time Machine Backups”. And you can only do this with exFAT as with FAT32 Mac OS X’s Time Machine backup won’t work. You can format your external hard drive from either the PC or Mac. In the resulut, your external hard drive will work just fine with Mac and Windows.

However there is a simple solution – you can format the drive to FAT32 or exFAT that performs better than FAT32. Windows uses NTFS, and Mac OS uses HFS, these file systems are not compatible with each other.

Often switch between a Mac and PC? Want to use one USB flash storage device for both? The thing is that by default, these platforms use different file systems – discs are formatted differently.

Have a external hard drive formatted for mac and windows