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1 External Hard Drive for Your Mac and PC

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You can share one hard drive between your Mac and PC, but it needs to be in the right format.

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1 External Hard Drive for Your Mac and PC

By: Chuck Konfrst
Published: Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Categories: Mastering the Mac, Switching from Windows

So you have a PC, a Mac and an external hard drive you want to all play friendly. Well it’s not as easy as it sounds.

Sure, the USB or Firewire ports are the same on both machines, but the real culprit is file formats.

Windows uses either FAT32 or NTFS. Mac OS X uses Mac OS Extended also known as HFS+. All you really need to know is that they are just three different methods for storing information. Macs can handle some Windows formats, but Windows cannot handle HFS+ without additional software.

To see the format of the external drive, right-click on the icon and select Properties (Windows) or Get Info (Mac)

Mac OS X has been able to read and write FAT32 formatted hard drives since the very beginning. If you have a FAT32 drive you can simply connect it to your Mac and it will very easily be able to read and write to it. There is nothing special you need to do. However, there are two limitations of FAT32. 1.) It only supports file sizes of 4GB or less. 2.) Some Mac applications may not run from the drive as FAT32 does not adequately handle the permissions structure of Mac OS X.

NTFS is a different story. NTFS is a more modern Windows format but is proprietary to Microsoft. Licensing is required to use it which is probably why Apple doesn’t fully support it. Macs can read an NTFS drive, but they cannot write to one. So you have 4 options if you have an NTFS external hard drive:

Option	Pro	Cons
Leave NTFS if you are just using the drive to transfer files from the PC to the Mac.	Easy - Nothing to do.	You will not be able to transfer files from the Mac to the PC.
Reformat your NTFS drive to FAT32. Don’t forget to backup your files first!	Easy Requires no special software Good if you will be sharing the drive equally between the Mac and PC.	You need to reformat the drive. Limited to 4GB files or less. Some Mac applications my not run from the drive (not an issue if you are simply backing up though).
Reformat your drive to HFS+. You will need software such as MacDrive ($50) so that Windows will be able to read/write to the drive.	Good if you think you will primarily use the drive on the Mac and only occasionally on the PC.	Cost Relatively more complicated to install/maintain.
Keep NTFS and install NTFS For Mac 6.0 ($30) so that the Mac will be able to read and write to the drive.	Good if you will be using the drive primarily on the PC.	Cost Relatively more complicated to install/maintain.

How to Format Your External Hard Drive - Mac OS X

Backup any data on the drive - formatting will erase everything.
Open “Disk Utility” (Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility)
Click on the External Drive
Click on the “Erase” tab
In “Volume Format” select either Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or MS-DOS (FAT32).
Click “Erase”

Note: This is to format your drive using the default settings. You can further customize the formatting by selecting partitions, security settings, free space and other options. See http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/partitioning_tiger.html for a great step-by-step walkthrough.

How to Format Your External Hard Drive - Windows

Backup any data on the drive - formatting will erase everything.
Double-click on “My Computer”
Right-click on the External Drive
Select “Format...”
In “File System” select either FAT32 or NTFS
Click “Start”

Note: This is to format your drive using the default settings. You can further customize the formatting by selecting capacity, allocation size and other options. See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/313348 for further details.

Do you have any tips to share about using your HD on both a Mac and PC? Let us know or ask questions in the Comments section below!


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Your Comments:

I have used a $500 snap server for about 4 years. It attaches to the router or hub/switch device with a CAT5 cable.

If I want to move something from PC to Mac and don't want to use email or a USB hub, I simply save to the file server frin one computer, and retrieve it on the other.

At home, the snap server is set up as a "Share", just like the file server your IT department has provided you with at work.

Alas, I have never figured out how to back up the Snap Server. So until I do, I'm running a risk. SuperDuper will back up internal hard drives, (and external USB or firewire hard drives too I believe!) but will NOT back up a network attached storage drive. Sigh.....

- Dan Ashley, Chicago

Dan Ashley
01/31/2008 at 11:29 AM

I was just looking to do this today; What a timely article. I am thinking that a might just divide the HD in two partitions; one Mac and the other PC.

Roger
01/31/2008 at 05:02 PM

how about this: install Windows XP on your mac using Parallels (price?), then everytime you need to transfer files from mac to pc, or pc to mac, do it using Windows XP on your mac. Is this a good solution too?

macdrive
01/31/2008 at 08:58 PM

macdrive, I was only looking for a backup drive that could be shared between a Mac and a PC; don't really need to share files. The Mac is a G4 and way too old for Parallels. This is for my daughter who uses a Mac and also has a ThinkPad to access the PC server for her store's POS system.

Roger
01/31/2008 at 09:12 PM

Dividing the drive into 2 partitions still will not let you share files between the two computers. It certainly addresses the storage issue, but the file formats will still get in the way of sharing...

Chuck Konfrst
02/01/2008 at 08:10 PM

Yo haven't listed macfuse as an opion for reading and writing to NTFS drives. It's slower, and a little buggier but it works

Dhruv Govil
02/02/2008 at 06:15 AM

still don't understand

Robert
02/05/2008 at 08:02 PM

I'm running MAC OS X 10.5.2 and have an NTFS formatted external hard drive. From this article I feel like I should be able to get my old PC files off my external hard drive without reformatting. My Mac wont read the drive. What am I doing wrong?

Andy H
02/17/2008 at 03:32 PM

It indeed should be able to read it. How are you hooking it up to your Mac - Firewire or USB? What brand is the external drive?

Chuck Konfrst
02/17/2008 at 04:50 PM

The idea of making 2 partions on a single drive sounds perfect for me. I just want to back up my Windoze notebook (for work) and my Mac (personal stuff). No need to share files between them. Can I do this? ...Format 1 partion for Windoze and format the other as a Mac partition? I would then run separate backup software from each machine. I would physically move the drive between machines and disconnect and store it when not in use.

Lorax
02/20/2008 at 06:57 PM