FORMATTING AN EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE FOR MAC AND WINDOWS HOW TO

How to make external hard drive compatible with Mac and PC? Thus, many users would like to use exFAT instead of FAT32 to make an external hard drive for mac and windows interchangeable. However, FAT32 has a maximum 4GB file size limit whereas exFAT can work with files as large as 16EB. So, if you want to use an external hard drive on both Windows and Mac, you need to format it to a filesystem that is compatible with Windows PC and Mac.īoth FAT32 and exFAT can be used on Windows PC and Mac. Windows PC and Mac use different filesystems. I have logged a support call with Paragon on this issue and am waiting a reply.ģ) Connection with Firewire 400 from Lacie to Mac - have not tried it yet.Need to format an external hard drive for Mac and Windows I found a solution from another MAC user: 'Paragon NTFS for Mac OS' (seeġ) connect my Lacie to my PC and formatted it in NTFS format.ġ) Connection with USB2.0 from Lacie to Mac - it works (can read and write to LAcie formatted in NTFS)Ģ) Connection with Firewire 800 from Lacie to Mac - it does NOT work. I work a lot with VMWare, so I need the LACIE to be able to connect to both PC and MAC.

FORMATTING AN EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE FOR MAC AND WINDOWS SOFTWARE

Here is what I know and tried:ġ) If you format the Lacie in Mac format, then you can't use it on a Windows machine without software eg MacDrive.Ģ) If you format the Lacie in NTFS, you can only read from it when connected to Mac without other software.

I purchased a Lacie 500GB ruggedized drive. I just moved to Mac from Windows last week onto a new MBP.

FORMATTING AN EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE FOR MAC AND WINDOWS PRO

Is disk utility something already installed on the MacBook Pro? The MacBook Pro (OS X 10.4.11) that I have is from my work and they have disabled admin rights, so even with this slight handicap do you think everything should work out?

FORMATTING AN EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE FOR MAC AND WINDOWS MANUAL

The user manual and utilities will not be available on your drive and will have to be downloaded from the LaCie website: Does this mean that if I manually format my disk I'll have to download all the utilites myself? So, correct me if I'm wrong, but you think I should format my drive manually through LaCie's setup assistant and then reformat the drive through disk utility? I would really appreciate detailed steps, if it's not an inconvenience to you. 'Your drive will not be ready to use and will require manual formatting. I really appreciate your response! So I did plug it into my PC laptop and actually the LaCie Setup Assistant automatically launches as well (as it did on the MacBook Pro) and if I want to quit out of this setup I am threatened with this message: Is there a way that I can just partition it into a single storage space – as how servers store data, regardless of whether it’s a PC or MAC file? I’m also wondering what would happen if I were to plug it into my laptop first? If it doesn’t ask me to partition the drive on my PC, will it ask me when I plug it back into the MAC afterwards? And if I partition it then, what would happen to my data? But what about simple compatible files that are read cross platform, such as Word documents? Would I still only be able to access each file depending on the platform and the partition? I was thinking of transferring the files through my MacBook Pro but I'm not sure how to partition the hard drive, since most of my files are generated from PC's and I would need to connect the hard drive to a PC in the future anyway.įrom what I understand, the files that I save in the Windows partition will only be recognized when on a PC, and the same for the MAC. Most of my files that I need to back up are on CD, DVD, and USB mini drives. I just recently purchased a LaCie 500 GB Hard Drive from the Apple Store in order to back up and store most of my PC (Window) files.

Formatting an external hard drive for mac and windows