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.

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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.

Formatting Hard Drive to use with TM and Windows

I hope this is not a strange question. I have new iMac with 500GB, and a Windows XP system that I'd like to use with my new eGO 1TB USB drive.
Will this work:
- Partition 750GB for Time Machine
- Partition 250GB to allow my Mac to store files permanantely, as well as being accessible by Windows XP.
I assume that there is a drive formatting process that allows this? In other words can one Partition be 'Mac Only' and the other 'Mac and PC'?
I am hoping that I can unplug the USB from the Mac, and take the eGo to the XP system, and have the 250GB Partition be accessible.
Am I on the right path here?

select the whole drive (model, not name) in disk utility and click on the partition tab. set the number of partitions to two and click on options. in the resulting popup set the partition scheme to GUID. then click on each partition and change the formats to Mac os extended journaled for the first 1 and to MS DOS (FAT) for the second one. finally, hit "apply".

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".

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.

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.

External Hard drive help: use with mac and pc? how to backup everything etc

Hello! I need some help regarding a new external hard drive I got from OWC. It is a 500 gb firewire 400 + usb 2.0 7200 rpm hard drive. I am running it from firewire. The software suggests the first thing you do is make a clone of your macbooks internal hard drive, that way if it fails later you can use the external to back everything up. If I do this ...
1. do I have to make the drive "Bootable" ? I have software called Data Backup 3 by Pro soft I think. It came with my external.
2. Can I still back up other stuff like my audio recordings and record onto that drive to a seperate folder?
3. If I make a bootable copy will it try and boot from the drive everytime I turn it on or something?
My other question is... how can I use this drive with a pc? I have a pc as well and I heard that the only way it will work is to format it in ms-dos mode (fat32?)
If I write it to fat32 will it slow down my drive or make it worse? I heard that you should format external drives specifically for mac if you have a mac; so it will only work with macs...
(sorry this is going on and on; it's like a chain reaction of questions)
so If its formatted to mac drive format then can I do this with my current situation:
1. I have wireless internet, the router is on a pc downstairs
2. Can I send files over a network somehow from the pc to my mac
3. then store it on my external?
If so can someone point me in that direction with a link?
Thank you for reading, sorry for making this so long.

1. No, you don't have to make a bootable clone.
2. If you use the drive for a bootable backup, then you cannot use the drive for other types of storage unless you partition the drive and make more than one volume.
3. No, it will not try to boot the computer. You must designate the startup volume using Startup Disk preferences.
If you wish to use the drive on both a Mac and a PC, then either you make two partitions - one for Mac and the other for the PC or you must format the entire drive using FAT32 so the drive can be used for read//write by both operating systems. If you do this then you cannot use the drive for a bootable backup nor can you use it with Time Machine.
FAT32 is slower for read/write on the Mac than using Mac formatting.
Optimally, I would suggest you partition the drive into two volumes. One volume formatted for the Mac and the other formatted FAT32.
You can send files from a PC to a Mac and vice-versa using File Sharing. Select Mac Help from the Finder's Help menu and search for "file sharing" or "sharing" to find help articles. Also see,
Mac OS X 10.5 Help- Setting up a Mac computer to share files with Windows users
Mac OS X 10.5 Help- Setting up a Windows computer to share files with Mac users
Mac OS X 10.5 Help- Sharing with Windows computers

Using external hard drive for itunes from mac to windows

Hello, I have an external hard drive for my itunes music connected to a G4. I just bought a laptop (windows) and would like to connect the external drive to it so it will read my music from the external hard drive. How can i do that?
Thanks,
M

You will lose all data when you reformat so you must copy it elsewhere temporarily, as for the format go to: Applications>Utilities>Disk Utility>Erase, in the format dropdown select MSDOS (FAT) and in the name dropdown, type a name.
Copy your data back to it and it will be accessible to windows and osx

HT1452 I want to reset the permissions on a western digital external hard drive to work between mac and windows... How can I do this easily?

I have a MacBook Pro and have recently bought a Western Digital external hard drive. I used it on my windows laptop first and unfortunately now on the Mac it is read only. How can I set it so that I can use it successfully between the both the Mac and windows laptop?
Thanks

MacQuack wrote:
You will need to pull all the information off first. The formatting will erase it all.
Use Disk Utility (in Applications >> Utilities or use Spotlight to find it). On the left select your WD drive and then select the Erase tab. Where it says Format, select exFat in the drop-down menu. Next, click Erase and done. It will take approx. 5-15mins to re-format.
Cons: You will be unable to store files 4GB or larger in this format (usually only dmg/iso files or large Outlook files). Also, you will be unable to use Time Machine or other auto-backup programs.
That is not entirely correct, there is no 4G limit using exFat, FAT32 is the one with the limit.

Format Hard Drive for Capture w/ FCP and use on PC?

Can someone tell me how I can format a hard drive that will ultimately be used by a client with only PC's -- so that I can capture video on my Mac using FCP?
In the past, I thought FCP broke up captured video into 2 GB segments when a hard drive was formatted for MS-DOS. But tonight I formatted my client's external hd using Disk Utility and the drive wasn't even available under system settings on FCP.
I'm really not at all PC-savvy anymore...can someone tell me if there is way to do this?
If it matters, I'm capturing home video from several sources: Canopus ADVC-300, and mini-DV tapes using a Sony camcorder.
Thanks!
Jenny

Thank you so much. The NTFS-3G did the trick. I have one more dumb question (again...I'm completely PC-illiterate). Would .dv be the best format for me to capture video again for a client who is a home user of a PC? I was planning to capture with FCP (in .mov format) -- but perhaps for ease of use for the client, I should use Toast or iMovie and capture in .dv?
Again...thanks for your help. This is the first time I've encountered this situation!
Jenny

Partitioning Hard Drive for Use with Mac (Time Machine) and Windows

I have a brand new Imac on which I am also running WIndows Vista through Boot Camp (sweet, by the way). I have a large external hard drive on which I set up Time Machine easily enough. I would like to partition the drive somehow so that I could use half the drive to separately back up files on the WIndows side, but I can't seem to do this. Any suggestions? Is this even possible with Time Machine?

You can use Disk Utility create two partitions. Choose FAT for the Windows partition and Mac Extended (Journaled) for the Mac. One limitation of FAT32 is that you can't write files bigger than 4GB. You can reformat this partition as NTFS within Vista which will allow bigger file sizes but you won't be able to write to this partition from within OS X without other utilities. Also you can't write to the OS X partition from Vista without other software.
Time Machine will not be able to back up the windows formatted drive partition.

2TB Time Capsule or External Hard Drive for use with Mac MINI and AppleTV

Hi,
My current setup is I have a 1TB Hard Drive linked to my intel Mac Mini via FireWire 400, the Mini shares my music and films through iTunes so that my AppleTV can pick them up.
All devices are connected to an AEBS 802.11n (early model) via Cat6 Gigabit cables.
As I have run out of space and am looking for a bigger drive, I wanted to know if I would be able to use the 2TB Time Capsule to hold my films and be able to stream them to the Mac Mini so that it may stream them through iTunes to the AppleTV.
The theory of if should work, as the devices are all Gigabit capable and connected by high quality Cat6 leads their shouldn't be network bandwith issues, I am just unsure of how quickly the TimeCapsule can read stored data from a hard drive and transmit, some of my films are HD and run 4GB plus.
The obvious answers is just to buy a bigger hard drive with FW400, however I would like to reduce the number of boxes I have under the TV, I plan to upgrade my AEBS to the latest one anyway so just thought it made sense to explore this option.
looking forward to hearing what you have to say.

Hello,
It should work in theory, but the disk access time of the TC is much slower. I was setup like you are with an external drive connected to a Mini via FW and I had true Gigabit transfer between computers.
When my hard drive failed I sold my Linksys gigabit router and bought a TC to reduce the number of boxes, but I soon learned that the read/write speed on a TC is a little bit faster than on a thumb drive! Not that great. All my machines are also connected with Cat6.
It's still OK to watch a movie though, but transferring 10+ Gb is a pain.

External Hard Drive for use on PC and Mac

I just purchased a SimpleTech external USB harddrive. I can copy files from both PC and MAC to it.
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--Files transferred from the MAC are visible by the PC, but when changed on PC the changes can't be seen on the MAC.
I contacted the company and they have no idea. Any thoughts??

You can't write to it because it's formatted as NTFS which OS X will read but not write to. If you want to continue using the drive with both a PC and OS X you will need to download and install NTFS-3G so you can then write to it from your Mac. You can get NTFS-3G at:
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/24481/ntfs-3g
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Use same external drive for itunes in mac and windows?

Hi,
I have a Macbook Air that has bootcamp and I use 99% of my time under Windows 7.
All of my music and movies are on an external hard drive and I have a problem using
it for iTunes under Windows and the Mac at the same time.
Is it possible to have both versions point to the same external drive?
I tried almost everything but it fails as the file paths are stored once and for all in
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When booting under OS/X and opening iTunes, it loads the .itl file and shows all music
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My iTunes lib was created under Windows and all files are stored in a variation of:
J:\Private\My Music\iTunes[Rock | Classical | Soundtracks]
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This is driving me nuts.
I'm not talking about Sharing an iTunes library over a network. I want to share the
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Steve

Anyone?

Can someone suggest an affordable external hard drive for use with FCPX and video editing on my Macbook Pro Retina

I have a Macbook Pro Retina from 2012 and I only got the 250GB hard drive. I'm getting ready to purchase a Panosonic HC-X920 to use with Final Cut Pro X already installed on my laptop. Since I know the file sizes are going to be so big, can anyone suggest an affordable external drive fast enough to keep up with editing the video? I'm not a pro and use it for family and personal projects.
I prefer some thunderbolt options since I haven't had a chance to use the inputs since I got my macbook pro. I just don't know what is necessarily too little or too big and too cheap and too expensive for my needs. Thank you.

OWC is a Mac specialist and a very trustworthy vendor. I have dealt with them and their technical stall on many occasions. Hence you may look at what they offer and be assured that they will stand behind what they sell:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/
I suspect that for your needs, a 1 TB drive is going to be the minimum.
Ciao.

FORMAT HARD DRIVE FOR USE ON MAC AND WINDOWS

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