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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.

See chart for the format that best serves your needs.

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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:

hey, this article has lighten a lot my mind. thank you.

but i still have one question (guys, it is from a very begginer): formatting the external hd in my mac will make me "lose" the compatibility with the PC - the one that I already have?
It means... Is it one way OR the other, or I can have this both "formatting"?

Thank you again

Yentl
04/10/2008 at 03:57 PM

If you format your external drive FAT32 both Windows an OS X will be able to read and write it.
If you format your external drive HFS+ (Default Mac format) you will only be able to read and write to it on Windows if you install MacDrive or some other similar 3rd party driver.
If you format your external drive NTFS (default windows format) your Mac will be able to read it but you will only be able to write to it if you install NTFS-3G or some other similar 3rd party driver.

Jon
04/10/2008 at 11:09 PM

Hello,
I've been searching in the web and I 've found some youtube videos teaching how to format the hd in a mac (actually for MS-DOS File System, in "disk utility").

Will this format work for both?

Thank you, again, Jon.

Yentl
04/11/2008 at 04:38 AM

If you have an external hard drive you would like to use the FAT32 system on and need to format it with windows, you might have problems because for FAT32, Windows XP or Vista limits you to a maximum size of 32Gb.

There is a way to solve this by using this litte program: http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32format.htm

Run it from the Command console (in Vista, run it in admin mode using CTRL SHIFT ENTER ;otherwise you won't get access to the hard drive) and you can easily do a quick format.

Just did this on my new WD Studio 750Gb harddrive which I can now use on both my Vista machine and my brand new lovely Macbook :D

evert
05/07/2008 at 03:34 AM

Evert, thank you for your hint!
I have solved my problem by following the instructions that are given in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEhbmJbAjPw

It was simple and it's worked fine.

(750 GB! Oh my god!)

Yentl
05/07/2008 at 04:49 AM

Sorry new to externals... I think I did the format but it was very quick. How can I check if it was done correctly and what format it is now? It is a 500GB but it only shows 465, is that normal?

puchingi
05/18/2008 at 10:47 AM

Hey puchingi
If you can 'work' - put files in it and also copy and paste them to your mac (and pc, it will depend of the format that you've chosen), i guess it is ok already!

To see the format, go to 'disk utility' or check the info of your external (Command-I).

The size I guess is due the formatting process, I think it is quite usual happening it.

Yentl Delanhesi
05/19/2008 at 05:51 AM

puchingi, yes the available space thing is normal and has effected drives for mac and pc for as long as I can remember. It's a lame marketing trick by the HD manufacturers. Figure you will be able to use about 7% less than what they say.

Chris Kerins
05/19/2008 at 09:48 AM

Thank you!!! I've been having a brain fart for the last 10 mins.

Thomas
05/21/2008 at 08:35 PM

great thread, is it possible to share one drive with multiple partitions between a mac and windows at the same time eg: connect to mac with firewire and windows with usb...will I be able to view both partitions (mac and win) at the same time or do Ineed to unplug one to view on the other...if this makes sense????

Thanks

newbie
05/22/2008 at 03:52 AM