Hard drive format for sharing

I've trying to set up a Mac and PC network using an Airport Extreme Base Station. What hard drive format is supported by both Windows and Mac OS? I'm switching over from a PCs so most my extermal hard drives are NTFS, but it seems that Airport Extreme isn't able to share this format over the network.

I've found that many people have similar questions, but I still haven't seen the direct answer.
In particular, I want to know which format is easiest for the Airport Extreme to share over a network, which both PCs and Macs will have access.
I would like to share my iTunes library over the network, as well as DIVX films, plus I will have InDesign files that I need to work on both on the PC (running Windows 7) and Macs.

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The best hard drive format for sharing XP and Mac

Hi, I just bought a external Hard drive and I would like to format it, but I don't know which format to use since I'm going to sharing the hard drive with XP(work) and my iMac(personal). I don want share using USB not network. thanks

1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your external 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. Set the number of partitions from the drop down menu one. Set the format type to MS-DOS. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to MBR then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
The drive should be usable on both a PC and a Mac.

Using IMOVIE '08 to import from DV camera to 'BUSLINK' external hard drive( formatted for MAC ) but no success and kept getting this message: The import was canceled. You may not have permission to write to /Volumes/BUSLINK/iMovie Events.localized. Thanx

Using IMOVIE '08 to import from DV camera to 'BUSLINK' external hard drive( formatted for MAC ) but no success and kept getting this message: The import was canceled. You may not have permission to write to /Volumes/BUSLINK/iMovie Events.localized. Thanx in advance!

I finally got a representative that was able to help me, she had me go to Get Info, by right clicking iMovie from the finder, and I had to click on Sharing & Permissions>Everyone>Read & Write

Hi.have a g5 mac,dual core 2.3 unit.i bought it with no hard drive.have got hard drive,formatted for mac.i am trying to load osx.i get a grey screen with a small box in the centre with 2 character faces,and then grey apple with loading icon spinning.help?

hi.have a g5 mac,dual core 2.3 unit.i bought it with no hard drive.have got hard drive,formatted for mac.i am trying to load osx.i get a grey screen with a small box in the centre with 2 character faces,and then grey apple with loading icon spinning.nothing is loading tho.

I see 10.6.3 in your profile---is tthat what you are trying to load? If so, it won't work. No PowerPC Mac like your G5 can run a Mac OS version higher than 10.5.8

External hard drive format for use in both OS9 and OSX

I have never use OS9. A friend of mine wants to transfer their files from an OS9 computer to an OSX computer. Is there a hard drive format that can be used on both OS9 and OSX. It would be great to be able to transfer the files over on my Firewire hard drive.
Many thanks,
Beaglebrain.

Beaglebrain,
Should have added that you should check the size of your HD. OS9 won't recognise anything beyond about 190GB.
Michael

External Hard Drive Formatting For Cross Platform File Sharing

I have been doing some research on formatting options that can read/write both OSX and Win7. Someone recommended that I use UDF. I'm curious hearing from the apple community whether there are any downsides to choosing this formatting method. Are there any other better ones to use? Thanks

Best I can tell, UDF is for DVDs and CDs, not HDDs.
If you want a compatible format for Mac and Windows on a HDD, FAT 32 or ExFAT will fit the bill. Fat32 does have a 4 GB file size limitation. It is best to format these on a PC.
You can use NTFS, but then you need third party software such as Paragon or Tuxere in order to write to the HDD.
Ciao.

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.

How can I transfer files off an external hard drive formatted for windows?

I just bought my first mac (yay!) and am trying to transfer my files off of my old pc. The problem is that I stored all my personal files on an external hard drive, which is of course formatted for windows. My mac will open it, but it is "read only." I tried plugging it back into my pc and using the Migration Assistant to transfer my files over, but it was not detected (rest of the pc was).
However, the second time I tried plugging it in to my pc, it told me it would need to be formatted first. Obviously my mac has changed something on it, and now all my personal files are on a hard drive that is unusable by either my old pc or my new mac!
Any suggestions would be appreciated! Heads up though, I am not especially computer literate, and my pc needs to stay intact as the husband needs it and some of the programs on it for school. Also, I have a second external hard drive that is brand new with nothing on it, if that will come in handy.
Thanks!

Format the extra HDD to EXFAT as previously indicated. There are two ways that can use to transferr the data.
1. Connect both drives to the PC and the copy the files to the newly formatted (EXFAT) drive from the HDD with the data . Then connect the EXFAT drive to the MBP and transfer the data to same.
2. Connect both drives to the MBP and open DISK UTILITY>RESTORE. Drag the drive with the data on it to the 'Source' field. Drag the EXFAT drive to the 'Destination' field. Click on the 'Restore' butt is on. After the transfer has been completed, close DISK UTILITY and place the data on the MBP where you want it.
Ciao.

Hard drive formatting for OSX and Windows 7 using GUID

Hey,
I am currently trying to format a 2TB WD Elements external hard drive so that I can use one half with Time Machine and the other half with Windows 7 (run using Boot Camp). From looking around online it appears that GPT is the best to use, and so using Disk Utility I formatted the hard hard drive into 2 partitions, one being Mac Os Extended (Journaled) and left the other as empty space. I then switched to Windows 7 (on the same machine) and formatted the empty space as NTFS. The problem is that now Windows 7 can see both partitions (and can see the contents of the HFS partition which I didn't think would be possible) but OSX can only see the NTFS partition (and has changed the label of the HFS partition from what I set to "disk0s2" when viewed in Disk Utility). I've probably done something very wrong, can anyone help?
Cam

you would have been fine had you set the free space to FAT instead.
You can read only from Windows to HFS unless you buy 3rd party HFS driver.
Same for NTFS only reverse.
You do not need or want to use BC Assistant for that external drive. At. All.

Portable Hard drive formating for use with windows and mac operating system

Just bought a verbatim sure fire 500g 800 firewire portable hard drive for my new macbook pro. I have not did bootcamp yet because I am deciding on wether to use Vista or the new windows 7 that will be coming out soon. The drive is already formated HFS+, how do I format the drive so I can write both windows and mac files to it. Help!!!

how do I format the drive so I can write both windows and mac files to it.
Either format it to MS-DOS from the DIsk Utility, or install a tool such as MacDrive into Windows and keep the drive in its current format, or install the NTFS-3G driver into Mac OS X and format the drive to NTFS in Windows.
(45687)

Reading MP3 music files from an external hard drive formatted for PC

I have 60 Gigabytes of MP3 files (my whole CD collection, mostly saved in high quality format) on a 120 GB external hard drive that was attached to my IBM Thinkpad. They are arranged in folders and subfolders, e.g. folder "Great pianists of the XXth Century" subfolder "Sviatoslav Richter" subfolder "Sviatoslav Richter CD1" files "(01) Bach English Suites 1", "(02) Bach English Suites 2".
1) My Mac (OS X.4 - Tiger - or is that X.3?) recognizes the drive as a drive (its icon appears on the desktop), but not its contents. I was told by somebody that I'd need a differently formatted PC Hard Drive for the Mac to recognize the content, and then by somebody else that the titles would all then be truncated to 8 characters. Is there a way around this? Preferably I'd like to be able to read a HD that is formatted for PCs in the way that is now standard, directly from my Mac.
2) Is there a way for iTunes - or some other music programme for the Mac - to play the MP3s as they are currently arranged, without having to reorder or rename them, or copying my whole CD collection onto a HD from scratch? (Getting 60 Gigs of MP3s from CDs is a task I'm not keen to repeat). If necessary, I could find a way to copy the current folders and files onto an external HD formatted for the Mac, but then that would hopefully be it.
At present I'm having to use the Thinkpad with Windows Media Player to play back all this music over my Hi-Fi, but would like to free up the Thinkpad for other uses by my family, and would like to run all my music from the Mac I use for everything else.

Thanks, Jason & Mike. This is how I resolved the problem. Turned out the disk with the data was in NTFS format. Neither my eMac nor my wife's Carbon iMac (prehistoric, in other words) was able to read it, on repeated attempts. In process I discovered (to my surprise) that the external hard drive attached to my eMac (a 320 Gig My Book) was formatted in FAT 32 format, and that the PC laptop (Thinkpad) read from it, and wrote to it, without any problem. (Is FAT 32 less than optimal for use with a pre-Intel Mac?). So I just copied the needed files from the NTFS disk to the FAT 32 disk, via the Thinkpad. When I reconnected the FAT 32 drive to the eMac, it turned out that it was easy [with some fiddling] to put the titles of the new music into the iTunes Library, without having to copy the music itself into iTunes. Making playlists does still seem to have to go manually. Sometimes the "New Playlist from Selection" option automatically gives a name (the original name) to the album from which the music came, sometimes it doesn't. Rationale not clear to me. Other problem: often the sequence is jumbled (this is after I added the whole collection of folders containing music to my iTunes Library in one fell swoop). Usually it was possible to correct this by copying track names for albums one album at a time from the external HD (in Columns view, selecting all the tracks in each folder simultaneously) directly into the playlist; the playlist name then always had to be copied or typed in separately. I don't know if I'm missing an easier route. Also, I see that I have version 4.7.1 of iTunes - I'll download a newer version! Don't know whether newer version will affect what I want to do in a positive sense.

External Hard Drive Formatted For Mac

Hello,
Can some one please point to a link to an external hard drive that comes formatted for Mac out of the box? My 90 year old mother-in-law needs a time machine backup and would freak out if I tried to guide her through Disk Utility to reformat the external drive she just bought from Radio Shack. So an out-of-the-box plug-n-play drive would work best for her.
Does anyone know of any? I know LaCie is/was Mac focused, but I need to have a drive that is ABSOLUTELY Mac plug-n-play when it gets delivered to her house.
Thanks!

Do you Skype with her? Seems like you could just do a Skype call and share her screen so you can literally tell her to click this, click that. I've done exactly this with my mother across the Atlantic to solve a different problem. If she's capable of plugging the new drive into the Mac (which it sounds like you intend her to do anyway), I'd have to believe she'll be able to follow your instructions if you can tell her which options to click. Formatting a drive is relatively few clicks. And, I think this wouldn't be any harder than figuring out how to setup Time Machine...
https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA10022/how-do-i-share-my-screen-in-skype-for-m ac-os-x

External hard drive formatted for a PC

In order to format my external hard drive to my imac, do I need to first copy all the files to the imac, and erase and reformat the hard drive. I just wanna make sure I'm doing this correctly, it scares me anytime I erase a hard drive. This is 4 years of wedding photo's that I can not afford to loose, but currently I can't put any further information on the hard drive, only remove it. Thank you in advance for any of your help.
Mark

NTFS can be read by Mac OS X if you install Macfuse or NTFS-Mac. Such hard drives though should not be used for booting, or backing up applications, or any non-platform agnostic files. You are limited to platform agnostic files as well with FAT32 too. MacDrive lets you format your hard drive for Macs while still use them on PCs.
Message was edited by: a brody

Which hard drive format for Mac/PC compatibility ?

Hi,
My external hard drive isn't working on my PC, in which format do I have to format the drive in order to use it on my Mac and PC ? And how do I do it ?
Sincerely

Hi,
have a look ahere for explanation of exFAT http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT
It's a proprietary file system introduced by Microsoft and intended to be used with flash drives.
Mac OS X can simply not handle it.
My proposal would be to connect the harddisk to your PC and reformat it.
Make sure to use MBR (Master Boot Record) as partition table and FAT32 as file system.
Since Windows only formats drives/partitions smaller than 32GB with FA32, you might have to use a third-party app like this one http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32format.htm
*Be aware that reformating the external harddisk will delete everything that is on it right now !*
Regards
Stefan

I have a an external hard drive formatted for Windows, and I want to move those files to a new hard drive formatted for both Windows and OS. Is this possible?

I just purchased a MB Air 13", as well as a Seagate Slim Backup Plus. I have an older external hard drive that I was using with a Dell laptop. I would like to get the files off of the older external hard drive, and onto the new Seagate drive. Is this possible? I'd also like to be able to add files going forward to the Seagate from either a PC or a Mac and be able to view/use them on the MB Air 13".
Thanks in advance.

You will have to format the Seagate external HDD to a format common to both Mac and PC such as ExFAT. That should allow you to transfer files from the old HDD and still allow you to use with your MBA.
Ciao.

Hard drive format for sharing

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