A hard drive can be used on any type of computer - PC or Mac. But in order for the computer and drive to talk to one another, the drive has to be formatted. This article explains. You can format your external hard drive from either the PC or Mac. 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”.

How do I format Western digital external hard drive for Mac and PC? 'I get a new Western digital hard drive and want to use it as an external disk to save working files. But I don't know how to format it since I should frequently switch from a PC to a Macbook. Can you tell me how to format an external hard drive for Mac and PC compatibility so that I can easily access or transfer my stuff between the two operating system?'

Overview of external hard drive formatting for Mac and PC As we all know, Mac and Windows use different file systems by default. So, if you frequently use both a PC and a Mac computer and want to share an external drive between the two operating system for data backup or transfer, you need to make it compatible with Mac and PC first. But how can you format external hard drive for Mac & PC?

What is the best file system that makes external hard drive compatible with both PC and Mac? What is the best file system that supported by both PC and Mac? Actually, many users have some doubts on this question. If you are one of them, you can choose FAT32 or exFAT in your case.

How to make mac recovery usb for os sierra. MacOS Sierra, the first of the new macOS systems, includes the ability to create a bootable installer on a USB flash drive or on a drive you have connected to your Mac. The advantage of the ability to create a bootable installer of macOS Sierra can’t be overstated.

Advantages of FAT32 file system: FAT32 is not only compatible with Mac and Windows but also many gaming and Linux OSs. Disadvantages of FAT32 file system: 1. Single files larger than 4GB on the external hard drive is not supported by FAT32. Mac OS X's Time Machine backup utility won't work with FAT32.

Excel in Office 2019 will get funnel charts and 2D maps. Photo: Microsoft Microsoft released Office 2019 Preview today, with the full release expected later this year. Mac users who prefer Microsoft's suite of productivity tools but aren't keen on Office 365 are getting their first chance to try Office 2019 for Mac. A preview of the suite (including Word, Excel.

How to format an external hard drive to FAT32 for Mac and PC If you ignored all the disadvantages and decided to format your external hard drive to FAT32, you might need a third-party software for help when the disk is larger than 32GB. What is new improved malwarebytes for mac. You know, Windows Disk Management utility completely cannot help at this moment. Here, you can try EaseUS, a program allows you to format Western Digital hard drive, Seagate hard drive, Toshiba hard drive, etc to FAT32 in Windows 10/8/7/XP/Vista with simple steps.

Windows 10 is supported To format external hard drive for Mac and PC: Step 1. Connect the external hard drive to PC, launch EaseUS free partition tool, right-click the disk and choose 'Format partition'.

Configure the label you want in the Partition Label box and then select the FAT32 file system in the 'File System' drop-down list for the disk. Choose the Cluster Size (512 bytes, 1, 2, 4.64KB) in the 'Cluster Size' drop-down list and click 'OK' to continue. Click 'Apply' to format the external hard drive to FAT32 for Mac and PC compatibility.

Share on Facebook Tweet this Share Compatibility issues between Microsoft Windows and Apple MacOS may have diminished sharply over the years, but that doesn’t mean they’ve completely disappeared. Today if you go out and buy a new external hard drive, you may notice that working between the two is an often demoralizing task — but it doesn’t need to be. A quick Google search may lead you to believe you’re on the right path by formatting the drive to FAT32. Unless every file you plan to store on the disk is less than 4GB in size, you may be better off avoiding this method, instead opting for the more storage efficient, reliable, and secure NTFS and Mac OS Extended file systems. Partition the drive on Windows 10 Possibly the best solution to using a hard drive with both Windows and Mac without the use of third-party software is creating two partitions on the drive, one for Windows and one for Mac. This essentially tricks the computer into thinking there are multiple hard drives connected to the computer at once despite there only being one. Partitioning is a fairly simple process, and we can show you how to.

We’ll go into more detail below on how cross platform partitioning works, too. Partition the drive on a Mac As far as partitioning goes, Macs have it a little bit easier. Plus, you don’t have to deal with the restrictions of FAT32, which is icing on the cake. That’s why — if you have the option — we would suggest partitioning your hard drive from the Mac itself.

Best free photo album app for mac. To do this, your first step will be to find Disk Utility. The easiest way to access Disk Utility is by searching for it in Spotlight Search in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. With Disk Utility open, locate the hard drive you want to partition and select Partition. If you want to start from scratch, you can do so by first clicking Erase, followed by Erase Free Space to format the disk. Next, under the Partition Layout column, specify the number of partitions you want to create on the drive. In the Partition Information category, specify the name and size of each partition. Since we’re showing you how to use a hard drive with both Mac and PC, this setup is simple, with one partition dedicated to MacOS and the other dedicated to Windows.