Best file format for portable hard drive mac and pc

#BEST FILE FORMAT FOR PORTABLE HARD DRIVE MAC AND PC MAC OS X#

WeвЂ™re going to do this anyway, so open Disk Utility from the prompt or by navigating to /Applications/Utilities.Дў.

#BEST FILE FORMAT FOR PORTABLE HARD DRIVE MAC AND PC MAC OS X#

If the drive is not formatted, you may get a message saying that the drive is unreadable by Mac OS X and asking you whether you want to format it via Disk Utility. The drive should automatically mount on your MacвЂ™s desktop (if the finder preferences are set to show external drives). Connect the power supply (if necessary), connect to the Mac via USB or FireWire, and turn on the drive. Set up your drive following the manufacturerвЂ™s instructions. To format a drive as FAT32 from a Mac, follow these simple steps.ДЎ. Conversely, Windows 7 canвЂ™t read and write to drives formatted as HFS+вЂ“also known as Mac OS Extended (journaled)вЂ“unless you install third-party software such as ParagonвЂ™s. Macs running Snow Leopard or Lion can read from drives formatted as NTFS, but they canвЂ™t write to such drives unless you install a third-party driver or muck about in the Terminal. Windows prefers to use NTFS (which stands for New Technology File System, though it has been around for nearly 20 years now).

Finally, Mac OS XвЂ™s Time Machine backup utility wonвЂ™t work with FAT32. When formatting partitions, Windows 7вЂ™s Disk Management utility wonвЂ™t let you create one thatвЂ™s larger than 32GB, whereas Mac OS X Lion can create partitions as large as 2TB using its Disk Utility application. So if you work with bulky video clips, for example, adopting FAT32 may not be a good idea. FAT32 imposes a size limit of 4GB on single files. The chief drawbacks of FAT32 involve file and partition size limitations. Though this format has some limitations, it enjoys nearly universal support from active platforms, including Mac and Windows operating systems, and many gaming and Linux OSs.

Looking to share an external hard drive between a Mac and PC? The best way to do it is with a drive formatted as FAT32.

Best file format for portable hard drive mac and pc