Posted by Katrina to on January 30th, 2018 The file system compatibility is always a big issue between Mac and Windows. It's well known that by default, Windows uses NTFS, and Mac OS uses HFS, these file systems are not compatible with each other.
Often switch between Mac and PC? Want to share one external hard drive between Mac and Windows? There are still ways to make external hard drive compatible with Mac and PC. Three ways to make external hard drive compatible with Mac and PC FAT32, exFAT and NTFS are three file systems for external drive in Windows. Based on these three file systems, we have three methods to make external hard drive compatible with Mac and PC.
Method 1: Format external hard drive as FAT32 (not recommend) As the oldest file system among these three file systems, FAT32 is compatible with a majority of recent and recently obsolete operating systems, including Mac and Windows. However, FAT32 can only support files up to 4 GB in size and A FAT32 partition must also be less than 8 TB. Thus, unless every file we plan to store on the disk is less than 4GB in size, we'd better avoid this method.
Overview of External Hard Drive Formatting for Mac and PC. As we all know, Mac and Windows use different file systems by default. You know, Windows Disk Management utility completely cannot help at this moment. Here, you can try EaseUS free partition software, a program allows you to format.
Method 2: Format external hard drive as exFAT The exFAT file system can also work with Mac and Windows. It eliminates the two major deficiencies of FAT32, which has no limitation on partition size or file sizes. And exFAT external hard drive is faster that FAT32 at reading and writing data. It's a great way to share external hard drive between Mac and Windows.
Method 3: Format external hard drive as NTFS NTFS is the default file system on Windows. But due to technical reasons and copyright issue, macOS only enables NTFS read support, but doesn't enable write support. To make your Mac compatible writing on NTFS, you have to install a professional.
There are a great deal of NTFS for Mac software in the market. Here we recommend you NTFS Assistant. NTFS Assistant - the cheapest NTFS for Mac Utility in App Store offers us not only the cheapest price in App Store, but also the fast speed when transferring bulky files. It on macOS Mojave 10.14/High Sierra 10.13/10.12 Sierra/10.11/10.10/10.9/10.8/10.7. With NTFS Assistant, we can easily, rename a file, edit a document, etc. IBoysoft Drive Manager - Manage NTFS external hard drive, external drive and network drive iBoysoft Drive Manager is a professional and easy-to-use that can read and write to NTFS, FAT32 and exFAT external hard drive on macOS Mojave 10.14//10.12 Sierra/10.11/10.10/10.9/10.8/10.7.