External Hard Drive Compatible with Mac and Windows?

So my old laptop is a Dell Latitude and I bought a Western Digital external hard drive and put all my files/pics/music on it. The information the WD came with said its compatible with Mac and Windows, but when I plug it into my brand spankin new Macbook, it doesn't register with the computer and won't show up. What's going on?
Message was edited by: philliesphan

I recently ran into that problem. In order to have the hard drive compatible for both PC and Mac it must be in a FAT32 format. In order to do this though all your files will be deleted (in order to reformat). You can do this by plugging in the hard drive into you mac and going under disk utility and there you will find your hard drive and under erase change the format to FAT32 and then you press erase (all will be deleted off the external drive though)

Similar Messages

External hard drive compatible with mac

I recently purchased a Lacie external hd (the porsche design P´9220). Had some initial trouble with getting it up and running, had to switch primary partition hd to actually get the 1 TB storage amount. I did this on a pc in computer management, because I couldn´t figure out how to do this on my mac. Anyway, when I swiched the primary partition hard drive to the right one, I only had two options for formating, either NTFS or exFAT. I thought exFAT would work on mac, but turns out it doesn´t.. Is there any way I can format this hd to fat/ fat32 either on mac or pc?? The whole point of buying this hd was that I thought it would be compatible with BOTH mac and pc at the same time..
Any help will be appreciated, thanks!
Hedda - Norway

Nah:
Drive Preparation
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 and size them to your preferences. 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 Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you created for Windows use, click on the Erase tab in the DU main window. Set the Format Type to MSDOS then click on the Erase button.

Can i use time capsule as external hard drive for both mac and windows

I have a mac book pro, ipad and iphone and ipod and a windows pc
Can i use time capsule as a external hard disk only for all of the above ( including windows ) without the back up activity for mac ?

You cannot access the TC from iOS devices without a browser. eg filebrowser.
Can i use time capsule as a external hard disk only for all of the above ( including windows ) without the back up activity for mac ?
Yes, with the following proviso.. the TC is not able to back itself up.. so if you store files on the TC without backups one day you will discover all your files are gone because of a hard drive failure of the TC. TM also cannot backup TC.. so you will need to buy a proper backup software.
It is also much slower than a real NAS..
And windows can be a bit painful.. especially windows 8.. other versions should work if you spend the time getting everything set right.

Hard Drive Compatible for Mac And Windows

This is a strange problem, and I cannot find a solution.
I just built a PC with a 300gb drive for just installing programs. I also bought a 500gb internal for storage of music, movies, pictures.
I want the 500gb to be able to be accessed over the network by my Macbook. I know that I need to format the drive to FAT32 so it can be read by both my mac and my PC, but Windows XP does not give me an option to format it into FAT32.
I have partition magic and it does not give me the FAT32 option either. What should I do. My goal is to use this drive as network storage and it will be my iTunes and iPhoto library for my macbook.
Thanks for your help.
Jake

If you are going to access the drive over a network you can go ahead and format NTFS as the Mac will never access the drive directly. OS X supports the SMB protocol used by Windows XP for network access, so any Win XP format will work.

External hard drive compatible with macbook pro 10.5.8

external hard drive compatible with macbook pro 10.5.8, i need a hard drive that will work with 10.5.8 to back everything up before upgrading to 10.6. a hard drive that is compatable with 10.5.8 has been impossible to find, a hard drive that works with both opperating systems is what i am looking for, any information that can help is appreciated

You can buy just about any USB2.0 hard drive and use it with your MacBook Pro. Many older external drives come pre-partitioned and formatted FAT32 for use on Windows. Your Mac can use that file system as well, but it has limitations on file sizes. You can always re-partition your external drive and re-format it as HFS+ (MacOS Extended Journaled) then your old Mac OS version and your new one should both be able to access it just fine. One thing to keep in mind is that many older OSes don't really handle drives larger than 2TB well, so you would probably want to try to keep your external drive to something smaller than 2TB...

One Format External Hard Drive for Your Mac and PC...

I have Formatted my External HD Passport 500GB = (465.8) and split it in two partition Mac OS Extended (Journal = 232GB) and FAT32 (Ms-Dos-FAT = 232GB) and reformat to NTFS using Windows...
How to use one External HUD for your Mac and PC you have a PC and how to have two Partition in Mac OS Extended (Journal) and FAT (Ms-Dos-FAT)as you desire the size of your partition under application, Utilities and Disk Utility and covert the (FAT32) to (NTFS)using Windows Control Panel or just search by Start, search Computer Management or just right my Computer and format the second partition to (NTFS)
Tips for Mac OS Extended (Journaled) FAT32 vs NTFS, what works and don't work...
(1)Mac OS Extended (Journaled) Partition can't be use in Windows to transfer files but NTFS Partition can be use in Mac by transferring file from Windows to Mac and NTFS support for files over 4G in size...
(2)FAT32 can be use in Mac and Windows but with a limitation that a file cannot be transferred to a FAT32 partition if the file is larger than 4GB such as a video file and FAT32 file system performs more slowly than NTFS...
(2)Mac OS Extended (Journaled) can be use in Windows when you Reformat your HD to HFS+ by third-party app such as http://www.macdrive.com/ MacDrive for $50.or http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/ NTFS For Mac 6.0 for $30...
Reference link 1 External Hard Drive for Your Mac and PC...
http://www.myfirstmac.com/index.php/mac/articles/1-external-hard-drive-for-your- mac-and-pc
Best regards...
JamesUFOs...
http://www.youtube.com/user/JamesEBEs

I have many external drives I use between my MacBook Pro and my Windows PC's. I use a free NTFS driver for Mac OS-X to give me full read/write access to any NTFS formatted partitions when running Mac OS. I also use MediaFour's MacDrive v8 on some of my Windows PC's to access any HFS+ formatted partitions.
Most of my drives are formatted NTFS because I have more Windows machines than I have MacDrive licenses, and with the driver for Mac OS, they are fully accessible. I have a few drives I do keep formatted as HFS+ because I have encountered an app or two that don't work quite right when they don't get to write to files on an HFS+ partition (one of my backup programs is picky about this).
As said before, FAT32 is fully accessible between the two OS'es but it also has it's own limitations.

With Time Machine I have an external hard drive formatted with Mac

With Time Machine I have an external hard drive formatted with Mac. The record contained files windows. How to recover?
Serious mistake: to connect a Mac to an external drive with data (important!) Windows, the warning appears: "You want to use the disk for Time Machine?" Wrong button, so in 2-3 seconds, the disk is formatted. Now Mac "sees" the disc but empty, Windows does not see it under "My Computer" but in "Disk Management" is reported as "hard core", "healthy", "GPT protective partition" Is there a way to retrieve the files? Sorry for my English Thanks

I'm having a difficult time following, I understand English isn't your native language. You may have good luck with Google Translate.
Also please read Pondini's Time Machine FAQs & Time Machine Troubleshooting.

External hard drive bootable with Mac OS x 10.9

Hello!
i have these: Install-OS-Mavericks DMG file.
but i don't know how to Install the file.
i can to install this at the external hard drive (USB).
please help me!
How to creat the external Hard drive bootable in the Mac Intel or Pro? please give me simple methode!
How to install the OS with the external Hard drive? or any solution.
Thank you very much for your help.
Justin R.

To install the file, if you did not download the Install Mac OS X from the Mac App Store, you must make sure your Mac Pro is compatible, it must be at least a Mac Pro3,1 to install Mavericks. If you are compatible, and want to install on a USB drive, first you must open Disk Utilities (in Finder, Applications, Utitlities) and then select the exernal drive from the devices listed in the left panel of the Disk Utilities window. Then decide if you want one or more partitions on the drive and the size of the partitions. Select each partition one at a time and name the partition and then choose the format as Mac OS X Extended (Journaled), and the Partition Table as GUID, and then Apply to format the drive.
Once that is done you place the Mavericks Installer DMG file on the desktop, double click to open and then choose the drive for installation to be the external drive you have formatted and named.
The installer will install and then delete itself when finished. If you want to keep a copy, make a copy and store it in a safe place, such as your Documents folder.
To boot to the external hard drive, restart the Mac Pro and hold the Option key. That will result in a grey screen with images for each of the bootable drives. Highlight the arrow under the drive you want to boot and then click that arrow again.

External Hard Drive problems with iTunes and iPod

I recently purchased a 320 gig external hard drive for my computer, hoping in part to load my iTunes library onto it. Obviously I'd have much more room on disc than my actual iPod, so I was going to manually manage my music (an option I didn't have selected on my iPod before).
I followed all the online help topics which have all been helpful so far. I organized my music files, changed my directory, consolidated my library, and now everything is on the external hard drive and is working just fine.
The problem comes when I connect my iPod. iTunes barely even seems to recognize my iPod all of a sudden, saying that it has been corrupted and needs to be restored. When I try restoring it, nothing happens, and I can't seem to do a thing about it through iTunes. Of course, there's actually nothing wrong with the iPod at all, since it still works fine and plays music exactly the same as before. It simply won't update or do anything at all when hooked up to my computer.
I know this has something to do with the new hard drive, since everything was just fine a few hours ago, I just can't figure out why I can't get my iPod to sync all of a sudden. Like I said, my iPod is working fine otherwise, iTunes is playing music through the external hard drive without any issues, and I haven't touched any files other than music files (I haven't even deleted them off my original hard drive yet, so all the original fines remain unchanged, even though I switched the directory).
To the best of my knowledge, all my software is up to date, and the iPod is a 30 gig photo. Any ideas?
pc Windows XP

Yeah, I gave the new drive the letter Z, so there shouldn't have been any conflicts there. I also tried your other suggestion, and while the computer recognized my external hard drive, it didn't seem to make any difference once I plugged in the iPod again.
I've been wrestling with this for days now. I've tried changing the drive letters for both the external hard drive and my iPod several times (but no matter what, the iPod always seems to take F when it's unplugged and then plugged back in). I've tried restoring the iPod on multiple occasions. I've tried reinstalling all my USB drivers. I've consolidated my music library on several occasions (I now have two identical libraries on my external hard drive), yet annoyingly, iTunes seems to keep switching file paths away from the external hard drive and back to their original locations on the C drive. I'm trying to free up internal hard drive space, not house 30 gigs of media on it. That's what this new external hard drive is for.
Somehow, I was able to get them both to be recognized at the same time, but it never lasts long. I'll start iTunes with the external hard drive disconnected, plug in my iPod, wait for the iPod screen to come up in iTunes, then plug my external hard drive back in. Then, I can miraculously start to transfer music back onto my iPod, but iTunes doesn't seem to want this to happen for some reason, and will usually cut off the transfer. So far I've managed to put three whole songs on my iPod.
So now I'm trying to do two things. One, the same as before, get my computer and iTunes to recognize both my iPod and my external hard dive at the same time. And two, get iTunes to stop changing the file paths back to the C drive. These files are already on my external hard drive and don't need to change.
(As a side note, I should comment on how helpful people are on this discussion board. The Apple representitives I called on several occasions seemed totally unwilling to help, acting more like pushy salesmen than anything, while people here seem to be much more friendly and knowledgeable. Just thought it needed to be said.)
pc Windows XP

How can I use my external hard drive on my mac and a windows computer?

Hello,
Can anyone help...I have recently purchased a new external hard drive for my macbook pro, it is a 1TB hard drive. I use it for time machine back ups which only takes up about 250gb of space so obviously I have a lot more to use. I'm at University and the computers there are Windows so I'm hoping to be able to drag my uni work to my external HD and connect it to the windows computers at my university so that I have my work there as well - however I'm not sure how I should format my HD???
Thanks

You will eventually use all of that 1TB external for the Time Machine backups, that is if you do regular Time Machine backups (It is NOT a One Time thing). So using that same external for anything else is not a good idea.
You would be much better off buying a large USB thumb drive, like 64GBs in size, and format that to one of the Windows formates that both Mac OS X and Windows can read from and write to. Those would be FAT32 and exFAT. If you are moving file less than 4GBs in size then format it FAT32. You can then copy files to it from your Mac and Read those files on the Windows PCs the school has and just stick that Thumb drive in your pocket.

External Hard Drive Usage between Mac and PC

I have a WD Passport SE 1 terabyte hard drive that I have backed up my PC (Windows XP) files on. I want to transfer files onto my Macbook Pro (OS X) but it comes up as read only. I've been reading a lot of different forums and stories about not being able to write and how to overcome that but am thoroughly confused.
I use Mac and PC equally as much and it's important for me to be able to use the External HD between both platforms because both computers are not in the same location at all times for a home network type situation.
I like the security of the NTFS but I don't want to do anything (or add any programs) that will make either the Mac or the PC unstable and unreliable.
What do you recommend I use to be able to read/write from both platforms that will be stable?
Why doesn't Apple/Microsoft get together and make a format compatible for both OS's?
Is it better to use NTFS or HFS+? What are the advantages/disadvantages of both?
I'm not very computer savvy on either machine so I need things dumb-ed down for me to understand. My mom is also in the same situation as I am so you would greatly be helping both of us out at the same time. Thanks in advance.

You have 3 basic options to work with. Both Mac and Windows support FAT32 drives in full read/write capabilities. This solution is all many need. There are limitations to this, and the big one comes in the max size for a single file. Using FAT32, a single file has a max size of 4GB (it might be only 2GB, but I believe it is 4GB). As I said, for many this is fine, and they have a simple solution supported out of the box on both OSes.
The second option is to format your external drive in HFS+ (Mac format). Your Mac will have full read/write access, and your PC will not have any access unless you ave the read-only driver from Boot Camp loaded, or if you buy a commercial driver like the ones from Paragon, or MacDrive. Many people will not consider this option unless they work primarily with Macs and only occasionally with a PC.
The third option is to format the external drive as NTFS. Out of the box, Mac OS-X providers read-only support for NTFS drives, and there are several choices for free or commercial drivers to give you full read/write access to the NTFS drive. This option seems to be used the most by people who often work with multiple PC's and sometimes with a Mac or two. I have not seen any of these NTFS drivers that make a Mac unstable, but some of them are quite slow. In my house, we have about 10 PC's and one Mac. It is more cost effective to to put drivers on the Mac vs on the 10 PC's (at $40-80 per PC).
At this point the recommendation depends upon your environment. If you are mostly around Macs and only a small number of PC's consider using a Mac format for the external drives and buying drivers for the few PC's that need to access the drive(s). If you are more like me where you interact with more PC's than Macs, consider using NTFS and getting a free or commercial NTFS driver for your Mac(s). Also keep in mind any computer that may need to access the external drive(s), so if you need a family member to access it, will they need drivers or not? One again, with my world being about 90% PC's and 10% (or less) Macs, having the majority of the computers that have full access to the drive out of the box is the "better" choice, especially considering the other computers (the Macs) can still read the information, just not write to the drives without a driver.

External hard drive for my Mac and PC

I recently bought a 15in MBP. I have been using an external hard drive to store my music using a PC's itunes. When I connected it to my MBP it didnt recognize it. So i put everything back on to my PC, and used the now empty hard drive as the device for my Time Machine. No when I connect the external hard drive to the PC, it doesnt recognize it. So now I cant transfer my music back onto my external hard drive and use it with my MBP. I need help!!!
Will I have to buy an all new external hard drive to put my music on and then use it for my MBP? Do I have to buy a specific brand and will it have to be formateed for Mac initially. If so, will it work on a PC? I just need advice.

For both the PC and Mac to recognise the hard drive, it has to be formatted as FAT or FAT32. Macs can read, but not write NTFS drives (which is the standard format for PC/Windows Vista/7); Windows can't read or write Mac OS formatted drives (which is what Time Machine requires)
Empty the drive, and reformat it in Windows as FAT32. There are some limitations: FAT32 won't allow an individual file large than 2GB, which may a problem if you store full movies in iTunes. But it will work.
If you're not happy to do that, there is software such as Macdrive for Windows that illl allow Win machines to deal with Mac formatted drives. I guess there are equivalents for the Mac to write to NTFS too

External Hard Drive Recognized on Mac and PC

Still in context to my other posting (Weekly Broadcast), I was wondering if anyone had any experience with formatting an External Hard Drive in Mac and still allow a PC to see it? I need to export a DV file from Final Cut Pro (which is 5.6 GB large) and save it to an external hard drive, connect that to a Television stations PC and put that file on their server. Any suggestions? And thanks for everyone's help in the past.

This can happen but in my experience it needs to be over a network.
If you use a MS-DOS formatted drive- which the mac can read and write to directly - you bump up against the 2gb file size limit. Windows NTFS drives do not have this limit but, Macs can not write to them if directly connected.
So, my solution has been to hang the NTFS drive off of a Windows machine, share it, and through the network, copy the file from a Mac to the drive.
I hope others have a more elegant solution for you.
good luck.
x

How do I make an NTFS external hard drive compatible with my Macbook Air?

I have bought an external hard drive with NTFS. How do I transfer files to this drive from my Macbook Air, and write files on it? I also would like to use the hard drive for a pc as well so any suggested solutions that allows me to use across my mac and a pc would be greatly appreciated.

marshalltimd wrote:
Never seen the term exFAT in a post previously - is that an enhanced version of FAT32?
Yes it is. Here's an abstract from this Microsoft KB page
The exFAT file system is the successor to FAT32 in the FAT family of file systems. The exFAT file system is a new file system format that addresses the growing needs of mobile personal storage on different operating systems. The exFAT file system handles large files, such as those that are used for media storage, and it enables seamless interoperability between desktop computers and devices, such as portable media devices. Because of this functionality, you can easily copy files between the desktop and external devices or between the desktop and other operating systems.

External hard drives compatible with time capsule generation 3

I am trying to connect a little 160Gb HP hard drive to my time capsule via a hub which also connects successfully a non wireless printer. This particular hard drive uses two usb in's to connect. Once i plug it into time capsule, it powers up, thinks for a while,the wee blue light becomes solid and there it is.
However it does not show up in the finder sidebar under Shared - though i have set preferences to show everything. the hard drive is formatted correctly, and i can access it when i plug it directly into the imac.
am i missing something ? or is it just not compatible with my time capsule ? - perhaps the two usb connections are the cause? i just want to be able to save files and access them on the external hard drive via the network from imac and laptop, instead of having to plug it in to either.....
any help much appreciated...
janemae

yep am using a usb hub,time cap. has only the one usb port- yes two usb outs on the hard drive , sorry, which merge into one into the hd, is bus powered...

External Hard Drive Compatible with Mac and Windows?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for