External hard drive between mac and pc

i got a "my passport" external hard drive to load all my stuff onto it from my mac, to be used on our pc. i have to reformat the hard drive for a mac before i can even copy my items on it. but my stupid question is, will it all open up fine on the pc? and i had to search for how to even reformat the external hard drive and found this answer, http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3865/p/228/session/L3RpbWUvMTMxN jMxNjgwNC9zaWQvUi0zeURtRWs%3D, but it is completely over my head. is it even the right thing?

With the drive plugged in, open Disk Utility. It's in the Utililities folder in your Applications folder. You should see the new drive in the left hand column along with your other drives. Click on the external drive and select the Erase tab. Set the format value to MS-DOS (FAT) and click on the Erase button. After that has finished select the Partition tab. Type in a Name for your hard drive and select how many partitions you want from the Volume Scheme. The usual settingis one partition. Click on the Options button after you've selected a partition to make sure it's set for Master Boot Record. Then click the Apply button and after the Partitioning is done quit Disk Utility. Your external drive should now appear on your desktop and be readable on a PC.

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Share External Hard Drive between Mac and PC

I have over 200Gb of HD wedding videos I captured with FCE to an external hard drive. I would like to mail the hard drive to the groom but he uses a PC.
Any ideas on how I can make this work so he can view the clips?
I know I can format the external hard drive to FAT 32 but that will take me forever to transfer over.
Is there an easier way?

He will also not be able to view the codec in which your material is written. You would need to convert everything to files using something like H.264.
If he installed Mac Drive 7 on his computer he could read a Mac formatted drive, but that wouldn't solve the codec issue.

What format should I made a shared external hard drive between Mac and bootcamp?

We have a small office running both macs and windows 7 on macs in bootcamp.
Currently we have 1 "master computer" which is a mac that stores all the data formatted in mac os extended (journaled). But we are always having rights issues with that and if that users machine is off, or having network problems we loose access.
The proposal is to get a new router with USB port and have a networked disk on where all the shared files are stored. The question is, what should the disk be formatted to?
As I have said the mac machines run bootcamp with 1 employee perminantly on windows 7. His hard drive is NTSC. As a side note I don't understand How can he open the networked shared files from the master mac!?
Ideally we want to search the folder for its contents from both mac and PC and I think this won't be possible if it is FAT32 formatted.
1 machine is the master mac
another is runs both mac and boot camp occasionaly.
3rd machine runs bootcamp constantly.
all macs are Lion 10.7.5
all bootcamp is windows 7.
we are in the uk
router is also our internet connection
we don't want an expensive server if we can help it.
Suggestions?

Fat32
Extfat or fat16bit is just poor Mans fat32 where you get more then 8 chars filenames but not support for large volumens
And msdos is fat8 which is useles

Switching external hard drive between pc and mac

I'm planning on buying about a 160-200g external hard drive. I have a pc with windows xp that I use, and I also have an iBook G4. It's becoming an annoyance moving files that I want on both computers, not to mention I am running out of hard drive space on my iBook. So I figured the best solution was an external drive...however I've been reading some posts and it seems as though you can only format them for a mac or a pc, not both. Can I use an external drive on both my computers with out having to partition the drive? Any other info on this would be appreciated. Also, if I can use it on both, can I hook them up simultaneously? Thanks!

yeah the auotplay search on the windows machine on a
large external can take ages but it only did this the
first time with me, but it still does take a lot
longer for it to recognise the drive.
just hit "cancel" button when autoplay starts up - once autoplay starts mean windows has recognized it anyways - it just is doing that to see if it should start up like windows media player or whatever :-P

Sharing external hard drive between PowerMac and Mac Pro

I have a western digital external hard drive connected to a PowerMac and one connected to a Mac Pro. The PowerMac can see the Mac Pro external, but not vise versa. Can someone tell me what could possibly be wrong? Both computers have the sharing setup and we have partitioned the hard drives.
Thanks

I'm assuming that you have Leopard on both Macs? When you say that you "see" the Mac Pro's external drive, are you seeing it in the sidebar? And if so is that showing up as the Mac Pro, or as the drive? It seems to me that if you're seeing the one, then what you've done is to "connect as" with the user login, but haven't yet done that with the MacPro to the PowerMac. Have you from the PowerMac clicked Add at the bottom of the User's list to add the right username, or clicked New Person to enter a name and password?

External Hard Drive for Mac AND PC

I need to purchase an external Hard Drive to be able to back up both my iMac and my partner's PC. I am currently looking at buying either:
Iomega UltraMax Hard Drive 500GB FireWire 400/USB 2.0
OR
Iomega 500GB Minimax Hard Drive with Dual Interface + USB/FireWire Hub
Can anyone tell me is it possible to format either of these Drives to be able to accept both Mac and PC, and if so, do either of these drives let you have a permanent connection to both at the same time, so they can be set up and left to do their backups automatically without always swapping cables over etc.
Does anyone have a preference between these drives?
(Oh, and for info, I won't be using Time Capsule as I only have 10.3.9!)
Thanks

I think there is a decent amount of BS in there...
I have a USB HD that came out of the box formatted as FAT32- both my MacBook Pro and PC laptop can read & write to it just fine. I haven't had it long enough to comment on stability, but haven't had any issues yet. I don't have any special software on the PC, either- I think the info from the Seagate forums sounds like people remembering the "old days" of Windows 98 and pre-OS X systems, when you did need software like that for true cross-platform drive access.
As for the drive not working on a LAN- well, the hardware doesn't know the difference, so as long as it's connected via USB to the AEBS, it's fine. What could cause an issue would be your PC OS version. I have found WinXP to be really good (well, for a Win OS, anyway) at playing nice with others. Vista is a train wreck for many, many reasons, but may be OK for this too. Anything earlier than XP may be a bit more troublesome.
Hope my 2 cents helps...

How can i use external hard drive with mac and pc!

I've been using a Lacie external hard drive with my mac to keep the itunes library and other things since day one. Since i have a dvd with files for windows and an old pc without a dvd drive, i decided to copy and paste the content of the dvd to the external hard drive. The only problem now is that when i plug the external hard drive to pc, it won't open. I know it has to be formatted in a different way, but i need to find out the best solution!
Any idea?

You can format the external drive in Fat32 (which I don't recommend but is the most compatible between both platforms), or NTFS (which requires some work to get your Mac to recognize), or HFS+ (which requires special software on your PC so your PC can use it).
If you use this drive mostly with your Mac, get MacDrive for your PC:
http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive
If you use this drive mostly with your PC, here's some software for you Mac. I haven't tried this myself, but the professional reviews have been good:
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/

Formatting external hard drive for MAC and Windows

I have an external hard drive that I would like to make compatible with BOTH Mac and Windows. I don't want to split it but is there any way that I can make it compatible to where I can use it back and forth between both? I have classes and use Photoshop on both systems and need to be able to read and write to the hard drive from each system. Please let me know if this is possible and how? Thanks

I have a 500GB external HDD which I had to format o Fat32 a while ago. I don't remember exactly how I did it, but I remember it was a pain in the *** and took forever (I was under Windows XP).
So short answer to your question is yes. It is possible and as the above person said, you need to format to Fat32. Long answer is it will take some time and effort. Here are a few links to help you get started:
http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32format.htm
http://macosx.com/forums/mac-os-x-system-mac-software/270038-format-new-hard-dis k-into-fat32.html
http://en.kioskea.net/faq/sujet-676-formatting-your-drive-with-fat32
I haven't tried any of these (I believe I formatted mine downloading a third party app), but you might be lucky. Good luck.

I want to format a Seagate Expansion External Hard Drive for Mac and PC

I ordered a Seagate Expansion 2 TB USB 3.0 Desktop External Hard Drive to use with my new Mac and my old PC (or at least get my photos off of both and put them on the drive). I thought all HDs could be formatted to use by both, I was able to get a Mac HD to work with my PC in 2008 (but it died). I am reading that this drive is PC only. I have Parallels and Windows 8 on my Mac if worse comes to worse but I would like all of my computers, real, virtual old and new to be able to access the external drive. Has anyone encountered this issue before? What should I format it in? FAT32? If yes, how would I go about that on a Mac. Or should I just return it?
I'm kind of Mac clueless. I spent my childhood through college on a Mac but I graduated right when OSX came around and I don't know how to work with the Mac "under the hood" like I did with OS9 and with Windows. So please talk to me like I am an an adult idiot.
Thanks!!!!

The optimum choice is to format it ExFAT, but do so on the PC, not the Mac. Alternatively, you can make two partitions - one for the Mac; one for the PC. Partition the drive using GUID when you make the two partitions. Format one using Mac OS Extended, Journaled. Format the other on your PC using NTFS if you won't need to write to it from the OS X side or use ExFAT if you do.
Drive Partition and Format
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to two. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Apply button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) you will use for Windows from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to MSDOS.
6. Click on the Erase button.
When you connect the drive to your PC reformat the PC volume to either NTFS or ExFAT.

External hard drive for Mac and Windows?

Hey all,
Is it possible to set up an external hard drive with a partition that has one side compatible with Mac and the other with Windows, similar to a Boot Camp setup on an internal drive? If so, how do I do that? Thanks for any advice you can give.

Rekishika:
Yes it is possible. Use Disk Utility from Leopard and partition the external drive to the desired space for each. Format one side with Mac HFS+ Journaled and the other with FAT32 (You can reformat the FAT32). You can also format both external partitions to FAT32 if you want Leopard and Windows to access (read and write)either one of them.
Axel F.

External Hard drive on mac and pc??

Hello,
Quick Question...sorry if this has already been discussed..
Set up my ipod as an external hard drive on my mac, but can't plug it into a pc without it asking me to format it....obviously I say no to this, but it won't let me open it without formatting it...
But when I plug a PC formatted ipod into my mac it see's it and it works fine...
Is this just stupid PC's not working properly, or does anyone know a way around using mac ipod's on pc's as external hard drive's????
Thanks in advance!
Mac OS X (10.4.9)

PC formatted iPod (FAT32) can be read by a Mac computer but not the other way round.
You can try this and install on your PC to read your Mac formatted iPod
http://www.mediafour.com/products/xplay/

External Hard Drive using MAC and PC

I recently formatted my 250gb hard drive to MS-DOS (FAT32) so I can use the drive with Mac and PC. When I came to plug in my external hard drive in the other day with another mac PC it said I could only read only under get info.
Why is this?
I couldnt save only open documents
Many thanks

kevin_ wrote:
Henry,
You should format the external drive as exFAT rather than FAT32. exFAT handles larger files than FAT32 would and is both Mac and Windows friendly.
And when he does, he should do it connected to the PC. There have been reports that while the Mac can format a drive in exFAT, it doesn't do as compatible a job as a PC will.

Partitioning an external hard drive for Mac and PC

I want to partition an external hard drive (3TB) into 3 even partitions. I want to use one for PC storage, one for Mac storage and the last for Mac backup. Is this possible and how do I do it?

Drive Partition and Format
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Apply button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
7. Re-partition the drive to create the three partitions. The one you wish to use on a PC you should format MSDOS (FAT).
When you connect the drive to your PC it should have no problem reading the partition set up for a PC. Now while on the PC you may wish to consider reformatting that partition using ExFAT (if supported on your PC.) This format is more compatible with both OS X and NTSF supporting long file names and other FAT filesystem irregularities.

Same External Hard Drive for Mac and PC?

Hello,
I just bought an iMac and a Lacie external hard drive. I plan to format the Lacie for the Mac. However I'd like to use it to tranfer my files from the PC. Will the Mac formatted Lacie External Drive work with both the iMac and the PC?
Thanks!
Jim

Another alternative is to get a Lacie drive and use it native to MAC. To acess read/ write capacity to your NTFS partitions refer to my post in:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1425010&tstart=0
regards,

How do I change NTFS settings for my external hard drive in Mac and PC

I recently purchased an external hard drive
SAMSUNG (Model No NM-0802)
when i plug the USB cable it will not display on the desktop of my mac
I operate on MacBook Pro and Mac OS X Lion
On the other hand, It is detected in the Disk Utilities pane and is currently set as NTFS format
how do i reformat it to work both in PC and Mac?
thx in advance

Shootist007 wrote:
I have never had any problems with a drive formatted FAT32 or exFAT on a Win PC when connected to a Mac.
Would you please comment on these two links
<http://krishaamer.com/2011/07/10/exfat-mac-pc-compatible-disk/>
<https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2767345?start=0&tstart=0>
(The second one is referred to in the first item.)
Wouldn't you think a MS OS knows how to format a drive correctly using that format, I do. It is Apple Mac that is not doing it correctly.
Kindly note that the word "correctly" does not appear in my post. I'm not quite sure how the statement,
"the Mac OS X exFAT filesystem implementation is not compatible with Win's default cluster size for exFAT"
can be interpreted to suggest that any OS is not "doing it correctly".

External hard drive between mac and pc

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