Can a portable hard drive be used on both Mac and PC?

While Windows and macOS primarily use their respective proprietary file systems, both support other file systems as well. 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.

How do I make my hard drive compatible with Mac?

How to format an external drive in OS X

1. Connect the drive to the Mac.
2. Open Disk Utility.
3. Select the drive you want to format.
4. Click Erase.
5. Give the drive a descriptive name and leave the default settings: OS X Extended format and GUID partition map.
6. Click Erase and OS X will format the drive.

Which hard drive is compatible with Mac and PC?

1. Format that drive to ExFAT. ExFAT is an efficient, fast, compatible file system. ExFAT works freely with both Macs and Windows PC.

Will any external hard drive work with Mac?

Any external hard drive will work with PCs or Macs, as long as the connectors are there (Firewire, USB, etc.) It doesn’t matter how the drive is formatted out of the box, since you can re-format any way you like. Formatting in HFS (Mac OS Extended) or FAT32 or NTFS-3G can be done with the Mac OS X Disk Utility.

How do I convert a Mac formatted drive to a Windows drive?

If you’re lucky, you can just right-click each partition on the Mac drive and select Delete Volume to remove the partitions. You can then right-click in the empty space and select New Simple Volume to create a partition and format it with the Windows NTFS or FAT32 file systems.

Do external hard drives need to be formatted Mac?

Format an External Hard Drive. External hard drives use either spinning disks or solid memory to save your files. On Mac computers, use the Finder app to browse and manage files on your computer and external hard drives. Before a hard drive can read or write data, it must first be formatted, or erased and reconfigured.

Are WD hard drives compatible with Mac?

A Western Digital external hard drive can be used on both Windows and Mac OSX. This is useful if a drive is being used under both Operating System (OS)to move files between the two environments. Most WD Drives come formatted in the NTFS (Windows) or HFS+ (Mac) format.

How to have an external hard drive for Mac and PC?

Options For Having An External Hard Drive For Mac And PC Without Formatting 1 Use a Software Solution – You get a piece of software that sits on your Mac. Or one for your Windows PC. This… 2 Use a Hardware Solution – An extra external hard drive. This allows you to have your documents set up so that both… More

Can I use my external hard drive on two computers?

You just need to fix the issue on the Windows PC for the short time you’ll use the external hard drive there. If your answer is, you will use equally on both. Then you’d be better off with your documents on your hard drive in a format both computers can read freely.

How to create a hard disk partition in Windows 10?

Connect the drive to your Windows PC. Open the Disk Management tool. You can do that by typing “disk format” or “disk management” in Windows search or going to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Create and format hard disk partitions.

How to format external hard drive in Windows 10?

Open the Disk Management tool. You can do that by typing “disk format” or “disk management” in Windows search or going to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Create and format hard disk partitions. Right-click on the external drive’s partition or unallocated space you want to format and choose New Simple Volume