- #Seagate external hard drive formatted for mac how to#
- #Seagate external hard drive formatted for mac for mac#
- #Seagate external hard drive formatted for mac mac os x#
- #Seagate external hard drive formatted for mac install#
- #Seagate external hard drive formatted for mac software#
If your external drive saves files larger than 4GB or you plan to save larger files to this drive, converting to FAT32 is not recommended. However, single files on a FAT32 drive can't be larger than 4GB. As long as we format the external hard drive to one of these 2 file systems, it can be shared between Mac and Windows.īoth FAT32 and exFAT have advantages and disadvantages.įAT32: FAT32 works with all versions of Windows, Mac OS, Linux, game consoles, etc. Similarly, Windows OS will ask us to format the HFS+ formatted drive when we connecting such a disk, let along edit files saved on HFS+ formatted hard disks unless we resort to third party programs.īut luckily, there are file systems well supported by both Mac and Windows PC, and they are FAT32 (it might be called MS-DOS on Mac) and exFAT.
However, when we connect a NTFS formatted disk to Mac, Mac OS X doesn't allow us to write files to the drive neither edit files, though it can read a NTFS drive.
To put it simply, if you want to share external hard drive between Mac and PC, you need to format an external hard drive for Mac and PC.Ĭurrently, hard drives for Windows PC are always formatted with NTFS, while hard disks for Mac are formatted with HFS+. Why Need to Format External Hard Drive for Mac and PC Actually, most external hard disks could be compatible with Mac and PC as long as you format them correctly. Well, is there an external hard drive that could be shared between Mac and Windows PC? Of course, there is.
How to Quickly Format External Hard Drive for Mac and PC without Losing DataĪs we know, external hard drives are widely used to backup data or interchange files among different computers. Apple’s Experimental NTFS-Writing Support: Don’t Do This, Seriously. The Best Free Third-Party Drivers: FUSE for macOS. The Best Paid Third-Party Driver: Paragon NTFS for Mac. Three Options for Accessing NTFS Drives on Mac. 
Why Need to Format External Hard Drive for Mac and PC. If you want your Mac to be able to write to this partition, you'll need third-party software to enable this on Mac OS X.
This would be a good volume to install Windows onto, but beware that Mac OS X only has read-only support for NTFS built-in.
If you want the drive to have a volume that's more optimal for Windows than FAT, give it an NTFS partition as well. The FAT volume format is showing its age, but a huge variety of OSes know how to work with it. This is a good place to put files that you want both Mac and Windows to have read/write access to. 
Give the drive one FAT32 (MS-DOS) partition, which both Mac OS X and Windows can read and write. This volume format accommodates Mac OS X and Mac files the best. Give the drive one HFS+J (Mac OS Extended, Journaled) partition large enough to install Mac OS X onto (10GB+). Also avoid Apple Partition Map, which Windows machines would have no clue about. Avoid Master Boot Record, which Intel Macs can't boot from. 
Reformat the drive, using the GUID Partition Table (GPT) as the low-level partition table format. If you want something that both machines / OSes can read a write, and that can act as an emergency boot drive for either machine, do this: Using additional software like this will probably create a performance hit, but how noticeable it is depends on your usage pattern. You should choose the filesystem that you plan on using most frequently so that it is as fast as possible and then reformat the disk accordingly. On the Mac, this can be accomplished using add-ons related to the MacFuse project. Look at additional software which will allow for either NTFS or HFS+ to be read on OS X and Windows respectively. This could be used to move data between the Mac and the Windows machine, but would suffer from all the same FAT32 issues mentioned above. In addition to limitation to file sizes < 4 GB, you also lose a lot of nice features on HFS+ such as permissions and journalling.Ĭreate a FAT32 partition on the disk along side the existing HFS+ partition. Reformat the disk to FAT32, which ( as suggested by Michael Sturm) is the lowest common denominator in file systems between OS X and Windows. This file system type is not natively supported by Windows, which is why the disk will not mount when you plug it into your laptop. If it is Mac OS Extended or a something similar then your disk is using the HFS+ file system, which is the default for OS X. the name you see in your file tree when the disk mounts under OS X) what do you see for the Format at the bottom of the window? If you open the Disk Utility application on your Mac with the disk connected, you should be able to see it in the list of disks on the left hand column of the Disk Utility window.
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