• Internal Hard Drive For Mac
• Internal Hard Drive For Macbook Pro
• External Hard Drive For Mac And Pc Interchangeable 2019

Aug 08, 2006  Hi! I'd like to get an external hard drive. I'm wondering if I can get just one to work for both a Mac and a PC. That is, I want first to download my files from my PC onto the hard drive and then use that hard drive from then on for my Mac. Cons: Not compatible with older operating systems. You must have Mac OS X 10.6.5 or newer, and PCs need to be Windows Vista SP1, Windows 7, or newer. Although it is possible to format a drive as exFAT from Disk Utility on the Mac, that drive will not work with Windows PCs, and that’s not what we’re after. To format the drive to work with. Shop for Mac external hard drives at Best Buy. Compare and read customer reviews to purchase the Apple hard drive that fits your needs.

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For those who use both Microsoft Windows and Apple macOS, having a single external hard drive that is compatible with both operating systems could be very beneficial. The problem with this is that by default, Windows and macOS use different formatting styles that aren't directly compatible with each other. Windows uses the NTFS (New Technology File System) format, while macOS uses either HFS+ (Hierarchical File System Plus, a legacy format used by older versions of macOS) or APFS (Apple File System, a newer format used by recent macOS releases.)

There are some third-party solutions that can read Mac-formatted data on Windows and vice versa, but some of these are costly and may not offer 100 percent compatibility for all files. Instead of buying one of those programs, a better solution is to set up your external hard drive so that it is compatible with both your Windows machine and your Mac. This lets you create an external hard drive for Mac and PC that doesn't require any additional software to function.

Understanding Formats

When a hard drive is formatted, any data that's currently on the drive is erased and a new file system is set up for a computer's operating system to use. The file system determines how the operating system manages data, how that data is stored and what sort of storage blocks are used on the hard drive. The file system organizes the data in such a way that the operating system can access and use what it needs, so if the file system isn't supported by the OS then it has no way to actually access and read the data. In most cases, a drive with an unsupported file system won't even show up in Explorer or Finder unless you have set up your computer specifically to view the unsupported drives.

This is why it's so tricky to format for Windows and Mac on the same hard drive. Assuming that you have newer computer models and are running recent versions of Windows and MacOS, the file systems used by your computers are incompatible. This is due largely to file system optimizations that were made with a specific operating system in mind, though competition between Microsoft and Apple may play a part in the proprietary nature of their respective OS file systems. With that said, there are a few ways to format a single external hard drive for both Mac and PC use without losing data or corrupting files.

How to Format for Mac and PC

While Windows and macOS primarily use their respective proprietary file systems, both support other file systems as well. In particular, both Windows and macOS support the exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table) file system that is commonly used for flash drives and other rewritable storage. This means that you can take an external hard drive and format it with the exFAT file system and it will then be readable and writable to both you_r Windows PC and your Ma_c.

If you choose to do this, however, it is important to avoid changing the settings of the file system too much when you format. By default, exFAT uses 32KB and 128KB data clusters when reading and writing (respectively); you can change this up to 32GB per function when choosing the formatting settings. MacOS doesn't support exFAT cluster sizes greater than 1024KB, however, so if you increase the cluster size significantly then the drive will only be usable by your Windows computer. Additionally, some users have reported issues with reading exFAT drives on Windows PCs if the drives were formatted on a macOS computer; while this does not happen for all users, to avoid potential problems you may wish to format the drive on your Windows PC instead of your Mac.

Dual Formatting

If you have some specific need for NTFS or APFS/HFS+, or you simply don't wish to use exFAT to format your external drive, there is another option available to you. Instead of formatting the drive with a single file system, you can create two partitions on the drive and format each of those with a different file system. This will reduce the amount of space that's available for either Windows or Mac files, but it will ensure that you have storage space on your external drive that's in your preferred format regardless of which computer you're on at the time. If choosing this route, make sure that you have sufficient space on the hard drive to make the dual partition worthwhile. Starting with a 500GB hard drive would only give you 250GB of space per partition, assuming that the partitions were equal; you may be better off going with at least a 1TB hard drive unless your storage needs are minimal.

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This can be done starting on either computer, using the operating system's disk management tools to create two partitions on the drive. If you have any data currently on the drive you should back it up before partitioning, since it could become corrupted or deleted during the process. Either shrink the current volume and add a new partition on the empty space or create two partitions if the drive hasn't been formatted yet. (If there is already a partition there but you wish to start fresh you can delete the current partition and treat the entire drive as empty space.)

Once the two partitions are created, use your Mac to format one of the partitions in either APFS or HFS+ and use your Windows PC to format the other partition in NTFS. Each computer will only be able to access its appropriately-formatted partition, though disk management software should be able to see the other partition as well if needed.

Reformatting the Drive

Should you decide at some point that you no longer want an exFAT or dual-partitioned drive, you can reformat the external drive for use by Windows or macOS at a later date. If there are multiple partitions on the drive then you should probably delete them to avoid accidentally formatting only one of the partitions instead of the entire drive. Even if there's only a single exFAT partition on the drive, make sure that you back up any files or programs that the drive contains since reformatting will erase everything contained on the drive. While there are ways to recover files and data after a format, these are not always 100 percent effective and data may be damaged, corrupted or lost completely.

When you reformat the drive, it will be similar to the process of installing the file system with which you previously formatted the drive. Connect the drive to the computer you wish to use it with and format it in the appropriate file system to meet your needs. On a Windows PC, this would be NTFS; on macOS it would be APFS(or HFS+ if you're using an older Mac.) Of course, if you're moving from a dual-partitioned drive to a drive with a single partition on it then you could choose to format the drive with exFAT instead. Just make sure that you don't adjust the cluster sizes too much if you're hoping to retain the ability to use the drive on both a Mac and a Windows PC.

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Internal Hard Drive For Mac

The file system compatibility is always a big issue between Mac and Windows. It's well known that by default, Windows uses NTFS, and Mac OS uses HFS, these file systems are not compatible with each other. Often switch between Mac and PC? Want to share one external hard drive between Mac and Windows? No worries! There are still ways to make external hard drive compatible with Mac and PC.

Two ways to make external hard drive compatible with Mac and PC

FAT32, exFAT and NTFS are three file systems for external drive in Windows, while NTFS is read-only on Mac. Therefore, based on these three file systems, we have two methods to make external hard drive compatible with Mac and PC.

Method 1: Reformat this external hard drive (not recommend)

1. Reformat it as FAT32

As the oldest file system among these three file systems, FAT32 is compatible with a majority of recent and recently obsolete operating systems, including Mac and Windows. However, FAT32 can only support files up to 4 GB in size and A FAT32 partition must also be less than 8 TB. Thus, unless every file we plan to store on the disk is less than 4GB in size, we'd better avoid this method.

2. Reformat it as exFAT

The exFAT file system can also work with Mac and Windows. It eliminates the two major deficiencies of FAT32, which has no limitation on partition size or file sizes. And exFAT external hard drive is faster that FAT32 at reading and writing data. It's a great way to share external hard drive between Mac and Windows.

Method 2: Use an NTFS driver for Mac

Internal Hard Drive For Macbook Pro

NTFS is the default file system on Windows. But due to technical reasons and copyright issue, macOS only enables NTFS read support, but doesn't enable write support. To make your Mac compatible writing on NTFS, you can install a professionalNTFS driver for Mac like iBoysoft NTFS for Mac.

iBoysoft NTFS for Mac - the easiest way to manage NTFS external hard drives on Mac

External Hard Drive For Mac And Pc Interchangeable 2019

iBoysoft NTFS for Mac is a professional and easy-to-useNTFS mounter for Mac that can mount NTFS formatted external hard drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, memory cards, etc. in read-write mode on Mac, making NTFS compatible with both Mac and Windows. We can use this utility on macOS 10.15/10.14/10.13/10.12 and Mac OS X 10.11/10.10/10.9/10.8.

Aside from what mentioned above, iBoysoft NTFS for Mac is also a wonderful manager for NTFS external drives. With this tool, we can open, mount, unmount, repair, and erase NTFS drive on Mac natively. Also, you can use this tool to reformat other disk to NTFS on Mac natively.