Mac OS X and Windows can both read and write to disks in the FAT or ExFat format. Because Mac OS X Mountain Lion does not natively support writing to an external NTFS drive, you must erase your hard disk and format it using a compatible file system. Once formatted, you can connect your external hard drive to your Mac and transfer the data to the external drive. If your company switches between Windows and Mac computers often, keep an ExFat formatted disk available for quick file transfers.
![]() Hard Drive Formatting and Optional PartitioningStep 1
Connect the external hard drive to the Mac using the provided connector cable.
Step 2
Click the 'Go' menu, 'Utilities' and open 'Disk Utility' on your Mac.
Apr 22, 2012 2.Chosse either FAT32 or exFAT for gaining compatibility in Pc as well Mac. 3.Create two partitions on your hard drive to use with each OS, separately. You can create,delete,format,resize boot camp partition,repartition without any data loss, can make bootable DVD by Stellar partition manager. I found this tool really easy to use and efficient.
Step 3
Select the external disk from the sidebar, and click the 'Erase' tab. Select 'ExFat' from the Format drop-down field. Click 'Erase.'
If you want to partition the disk to save any data already on the disk, click the 'Partition' tab, click the '+' button and drag the original partition to resize. Click the 'New' partition you created, and select 'ExFat' from the Format drop-down list. Click 'Apply.'
Step 1
Connect the external hard drive to your Mac.
Step 2
Drag the files you want to transfer to the external hard drive's icon on your desktop. If the hard drive doesn't appear, click the 'Finder' icon in the Dock and click on the external hard drive in the Devices section. Then, drag the files to the external hard drive's window.
Step 3
Drag the hard drive icon to the Trash when the files have finished transferring. Or, open 'Finder' and click the 'Eject' button next to the external hard drive. If you get a notice that a file copying operation is in progress, click 'Cancel' and wait for it to finish.
Step 4
Connect the hard drive to your Windows computer. Open the external hard drive by clicking the 'Start' button, 'Computer' and selecting your hard drive.
Step 5
Drag the files from the external hard drive onto the Windows computer if you want to save a local copy.
Tip
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By Juno | Posted to NTFS for Mac, updated on August 6th, 2019 |
With an external hard drive, you can efficiently transfer large files between computers running the same operating system type. However, it could be a totally different story if you plan to do this between a Mac and a PC. That's because, the two platforms have their specific file systems by default: Windows uses NTFS, while Mac use HFS+ or APFS. Out of the box, Windows can't read or write to HFS+/APFS and Macs can't write to NTFS drives.
Though the default file system is really a hurdle to use one external hard drive between Windows and Mac, there're still file systems that can connect the two worlds, i.e. FAT32 and exFAT. Thus, in order to use the same external hard drive on both Macs and PCs, you can format your external hard drive and make it compatible with both macOS and Windows OS.
But before that, it will be helpful if you know some background information and do some preparations.
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