Connecting USB HD to TC; to use on Mac and Windows

Hi, I've been trawling through the discussions/support sections and I can't seem to find a solution to what can't be a rare a problem.
I have a USB Hard Drive that I want to use to transfer some stuff of my TC to a Windows computer. I've plugged it into the USB port of the TC and it's not appearing in my Finder window. However, if I plug it into my MB it becomes instantly readable. It's formatted in FAT at the moment.
Does it have to be formatted for Mac in order to be used with the TC? And will that therefore mean that it can't be read by a Windows computer? Am I going to have to connect directly to the MB and do the transfer of data via wireless through the MB (which will take forever!).
Thanks

reethebee wrote:
Hi,
I'm trying to connect my Samsung M3 1TB USB Slimline portable Hard drive to my Home Hub 4 so I can back up my Macbook Air wirelessly. I can't find any instrictuions on how to do this, my macbook is currently running OS X Lion. I have plugged the storage unit into the home hub and I can go into finder and I find "bthomehub4" listed in the shared folders but it won't allow me to connect. Anyone have any ideas on how I can access the USB storage through my home hub? I was told this is possible but can't find any instructions on how to do this on a macbook :/
Thanks,
Ree
Hi Ree,
You may need to format the storage unit to FAT32. I had the same problem until I realised the Samsung unit I was using was formatted to Mac. Use the Disk Utility app to change the format. Hopefully that would work for you as it did for me. Take care.
SH

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1 hd with 2 file formats for use between mac and windows?

Think this is the right forum...
I want to instal a program onto an external hard drive for use on both mac and windows. The program supports both mac and windows.
My plan is to get an external hd and partition it in half. One half i will format mac os extended and the other i will format ntfs. I'll instal the mac version on the mac partition and the windows version on the ntfs partition.
This should work i'm thinking, yes? I.e. when i plug it into windows it'll run the windows installation no problem and when i plug it into the mac it'll run the mac installation no problem?
Thanks.

An easier solution might be to just connect the drive to a Windows PC and format it as FAT32. Both Windows (98 and higher) as well as Mac allow full read/write access to FAT32 formatted drives. No need to download any drivers, etc. It just works.
Yes, this solution is not perfect, but none are. The free NTFS drivers for Mac are not most efficient drivers for speed/performance, the HFS+ drivers for Windows are not cheap, and have their own performance issues, and FAT32 has the limit of file sizes over 2GB (or is it 4GB now?) not supported. No one solution is perfect, but for the many one is better than the others, but it all depends upon their circumstances which is "better".

New drive - can i not use on mac and windows?

A year ago i bought a usb 2 wd external drive which i formatted on windows so that i could use it on both mac and osx - No probs.
I now have a seagate 750gb firewire 400 drive (thats formatted to NT) i want to do the same as i did with the usb2 0 ie format on windows so that i can use on mac and xp.
In the seagate manual it says that swapping data between windows and osx is BAD and YOU WILL LOSE DATA if you do this (it says i need madrive - but what if i want to get data of a college drive, or someone who doesnt want macdrive installed?)- is this manual statement true? i havent lost any data between my usb2 drive in the year ive had it!
Also, formatting the seagate drive to ms-dos file system on mac - this makes it mac only doesnt it?

Hi,
I do the same with my two WD externals.
You would need MacDrive if you want to use the NTFS (NT filse system) with the Seagate.
But if you choose FAT32 (that's what OSX calls MS-DOS) you don't need any kind of extra software to access (read/write) it from both Mac and PC.
One minor issue with FAT32 (MS-DOS) is, that the file size of a single file is limited to 4GB.
Regards
Stefan

What format for my external drive allows use with Mac and Windows?

I got an external hard disk (1 tr) and i want to used it for my windows and mac, i read i can have two partitions one for mac and one for windows, but i dont really want to have two parts, and I read i can format it by fat32 and i can write and read on both os, is that true?
I want to use it for movies, os backups, and files..
Is it true that i can only save files up to 4 GB when the format is fat32?
please advise..

It this case you would need to to go to "Disk Utility" on mac and select 3 partions which will be under the Parition Layout in my screen shot below. "Current" is grayed out that will drop down select 3 partitions and make one NTFS, second Mac OS Extended, third FAT32. Using the FAT32 for both Mac and Windows but the files have to be under 4GB each.

Best external hard drive format for use with mac and windows?

This is more of an apple operating system combined with windows operating system question, but being that my OS will upgrade an fluctuate there is not option to choose in the operating system section.
Anyways to the question(s)
This whole prbolem came about when my computer started having issues, I want to back it up and whether I can continue to use my laptop or not I will still be owning an apple in the future. I went to buy a hard for back up and got told that it is not as easy as one would think to transfer files from mac OS to windows OS and vice versa. I have a mac, my boyfriend has a windows computer; we share files. Mostly I just copy his files, but once in a while I give him files too. I have read up and talked to people and only found one solution so far to format the external drive to fat 32 or exfat. I think only mac has the exfat option, but works well between both OSs, correct me if I am wrong.
What is the difference between fat 32 and exfat?
A user posted some good info about formatting. More specifically .Drives, partitions, formatting w/Mac's + PC's
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3044
If I do not want to use fat32 or exfat is there a format type that works great for mac saving that I can still at least save files to that were originally on a windows computer? Such as I copy his files from his external drive to my computer and then save them to my external drive.
Is there a better format for file sharing between mac and windows that does not set a 4GB limit?
And a silly question, Can you dual format a hard drive?
Note: This format is for an external hard drive.

I still do not know which format would be the best. That is so that I can use it easily between mac OSX and windows. Is FAT32 the only true option? How limited is it? I heard it is limited to 4GB file size for windows and 32 GB for Mac. Are there other sources I have not found with more concrete information on the limitations of this format?
I really do still need this information and I need to back up my drive before I can take the computer in for service.

Previously windows used external drive to be used in mac (and windows)

i´ve just bought a macbook and planned to use a couple of external drives i previously used on my pc with time machine and whatnot. only it seems they are write-protected in mac os, so they can´t be used as back-up drives. do i have to format them again using mac, or do it in windows, or is there a way around this? and can it be done so both mac and windows recognizes it as writable?
thanks

Dave Sawyer wrote:
They're probably formatted NTFS, which Mac OS X can read but not write. There are third-party NTFS drivers, one open-source and one commercial, but you can just reformat the drive as FAT32 (MS-DOS format in Disk Utility) and it will work just fine with both your Mac and Windows systems.
If the OPs intent is to use it with Time Machine, the external drive needs to be formatted HFS+ (Mac OS Extended (Journaled) via Disk Utility. I believe there is a Windows app that permits viewing of HFS+ drives. Since you have a 'couple' of external HDDs, it's probably best to use a dedicated HDD just for TM backups.

Using on Mac and Windows

I want to purchase CS6 design standard and before I do I wanted to know:
Can I use the products on Mac and windows (at the same time and one at a time) or do I have to purchase for each platform separately?
How many systems can I install and use on simultaneously?

So even for volume license the splitting of the suite to install its components on different machines is not allowed?
I know thats what is clearly stated in the EULA FAQ link you provided but it does not mention volume licensing
See http://www.adobe.com/volume-licensing/policies.html
CLP and EA Policies > EULAs
All use of a product is governed by the EULA for the product, which usually must be accepted by electronic click-through. EULAs are posted on the Adobe product license agreements page. Where the CLP 5 and EA terms and conditions conflict with a EULA, the CLP 5 and EA terms and conditions supersede.
one of my local resellers said I could slice it. Thats why I want to confirm.
What you're calling "slicing" is what Adobe's EULA terms "unbundling".
4.5 No Unbundling. The Software may include various applications and components, may allow access
to different Adobe Online Services, may support multiple platforms and languages, and may be
provided to Customer on multiple media or in multiple copies. Nonetheless, the Software is designed
and provided to Customer as a single product to be used as a single product on Computers as permitted
herein. Unless otherwise permitted in the Documentation, Customer is not required to install all
component parts of the Software, but Customer may not unbundle the component parts of the Software
for use on different Computers.

HT1218 i have a windows 8 computer that is not connecting with my time capsule wifi. my other macs and windows 7 systems do connect. is this a firmware update glitch? any suggestions?

I have a windows 8 computer that is connecting poorly via wifi and my Apple time capsule to the internet. My IMac an another windows 7 based computer are connecting fine. This started 6 days ago. And, the windows 8 machine connects well via a hard Cat-5 connection to the time capsule (I'm using that now) and worked well on a wireless netgrear system over the weekend.
I'm thinking an automatic firmware update may have caused this or perhaps i need the time capsule to use something other than a default address. Those are just guesses, but I could sure use some help. Thank you.

It is hard to figure where the issue is..
Certainly if windows updated the wireless driver that can mess things up no end..
What update happened 6days ago?
What TC do you have.. ?? If it is flat one and you updated to 7.6.4 do a factory reset and reconfigure.
If that doesn't work roll the firmware back to 7.6.1 or even 7.5.2 as these are generally superior to windows.
There is no update for TC gen5 yet.

I recently purchase macbook air with OS 10.10.2. I want to use my Seagate external backup plus hard drive for time machine back up. How to partition my 1TB Seagate back up plus hard drive for use with mac and windows pc?

Hi All,
I recently purchased 13" Macbook Air with OS 10.10.2. I want to use my 1TB Seagate backup plus external hard drive as time machine and my windows 7 pc. Please suggest a method. Thanks in advance for your reply.

I strongly recommend having an external drive dedicated solely for TimeMachine. You could partition the drive but if something goes wrong you risk losing the data on both partitions. Should you decide to go ahead with splitting the drive for two different uses you’ll need to partition the drive either using the Mac’s built in Disk Utility program or Windows utility. I believe the built in Windows disk utility program will destroy the current partition and erase the data that’s on it - I use a third party Windows disk utility program for partitioning and it allows for non-destructive partitioning but warns to back up data first just in case. Apple’s Disk Utility can do non-destructive partitions but I don’t recall every trying to do a non-destructive partition on a disk originally formatted for Windows using it. Again - back up that data just in case.
Finally, your TimeMachine drive should be at least 1.5 times (I prefer 2 times) the size of the data you expect to be backing up a year or two from now. In other words, if you currently are using 50GB of your computer’s drive but expect to begin purchasing Mac software to replace software on your Windows computer and if you expect to be putting photos, music, and other data on it you might expect that two years from now you’ll have 100GB of stuff on the drive. So a 200GB partition is the smallest size you’d want. TM’s backup scheme keeps multiple copies of data as it changes so the extra room is important for this scheme.

FORMAT HARD DRIVE FOR USE ON MAC AND WINDOWS

I'm going to start working on scanning a lot of old family photos and getting them put on an external hard drive for my parents. I'd also like to eventually put old VHS family home movies on the hard drive as well. However, I'm not sure what to do about the hard drive. I know if I format it to be compatible with my Mac it probably won't be compatible with their PC. I read about the FAT32 option but I saw something about a file not working if it's over 4 GB in size. I'm thinking maybe some of those home movies will be larger than 4GB. I also saw an exFAT option. If I go with that will I be able to scan the photos on my Mac, get the home videos converted and put it all on the hard drive will all of it be visible and usable on their Windows PC?
Thanks for your help!

matahari_1946,
if you’re not yet backing up your Mac’s internal hard disk, I’d recommend first that you purchase an external hard drive for yourself for exclusive use as a Time Machine backup destination; that way, in case of a disk problem, you won’t permanently lose all of your scanned photos and imported movies.
A 4 GB file limit does apply to FAT32 filesystems. If their version of Windows allows, the external disk which will hold those photos and videos should be formatted as NTFS from their PC, so that they can watch video files over 4 GB. (It’s unlikely that an individual photo file would be over 4 GB.) However, OS X doesn’t come out of the box with NTFS support. The exFAT filesystem is able to hold files over 4 GB, and it is supported by Mac OS X 10.6.5 and newer, but it’s optimized for flash drives; it’s more “fragile” on hard disks than other filesystems are. As a workaround, you could format a flash drive to have exFAT, copy videos over 4 GB onto the flash drive, and then use your parents’ PC to copy the videos from the flash drive to their NTFS external disk. Other alternatives would be to look for third-party software for OS X which supports reading from and writing to NTFS disks, or third-party software for Windows which supports reading from and writing to journaled HFS+ (the default OS X filesystem) disks.

External hd using for Mac and Windows

I'm using external free agent drive - seagate, My Mac can access and read and do anything with my drive but when I switch to other computer, it cant recognize my drive...What can I do now to fix it??? - I wanna share files from my drive to other computer as well. Besides, I dont wanna erase my drive to fix it...or if i have to, does anyone know how to back up my drive's data?

How have you formatted the drive? if you format in FAT, or FAT32, both systems should be able to read it. The MAC side will put some hidden folders (proprietary to MAC, leave them alone), but other than that, you should be able to use on both systems.

Music-library used on Mac and Windows

With iTunes 6 it was possible for me, to use my PC-synchronized iPod also with my Mac at home.
At work (Windows XP) I synchronized the iPod with outlook calendar datas and at home (iMac, Mac OS X) I copied my music library to the same iPod.
Why does this not work anymore?
Is there a possibility to make this work again?
Thanks for helping,
Dirk

Weird. We are having this same problem as well. Ours happens in Chrome as well. What I have figured out is -at least for us - is its somethign to do with the Google Analytics tracking cookie on our site. If I go to cookies and then delete the _umtz cookie, the site will load fine. In the time being I have set "pageTracker._setCampaignTrack(false); " in our tracking code to keep the script from dropping the cookie in users browsers.

How do I use an external hard drive on Mac and Windows?

How do I format an external HD for use on Mac and Windows? She has two laptops and have to use both.

format the external for Mac and use MacDrive or HFS+ for Windows on the windows side.
use the FAT32 format and live with the "4-GB-per-file" limit
format the drive NTFS and install e.g. the NTFS 3G driver on the Mac.

Using iPod shuffle 4th generation for first time and receiving the error : one of the USB devices attached to this computer has malfunctioned, and windows does not recognize it. For assistance in solving this problem, click this message

Using iPod shuffle 4th generation for first time and receiving the error : one of the USB devices attached to this computer has malfunctioned, and windows does not recognize it. For assistance in solving this problem, click this message.
Using win 7 and latest iTunes [10.6.3]. Have already gone through below links and did not find any solution.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2292
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1369
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1923
http://en.kioskea.net/forum/affich-17997-ipod-not-detected

I was hoping it would be something like a USB device conflict, but now the shuffle is the only thing connected...
This article was one of the ones you linked to above in your initial post
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1369
Under Part 9. Verify that USB drivers are installed, did you try the steps in If only "Unknown Device" appears? That appears to be your situation.
Also, you said that the shuffle initially worked well enough to do a sync, then it had the same problem again. If you can get it to work again initially, before doing anything else, try the following. Select the shuffle in the iTunes sidebar, under DEVICES. Over to the right, go to the Summary tab. By default, the checkbox for Enable disk use should be unchecked. If so, check it and Apply the change. See if that makes any difference.
(If Enable disk use was already checked, try unchecking it and Apply the change. Basically, set it the "other way" and see if there is any improvement.)
NOTE: When disk use is enabled, you have to eject the iPod in iTunes before disconnecting it physically.
If the disk use change makes a difference, that may provide a clue about the actual cause.

How do I convert my Windows 7 Folder to an ISO image to burn to a USB, in order to use Bootcamp Assistant to partition my MacBook Pro for Mac and Windows?

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Connecting USB HD to TC; to use on Mac and Windows

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