Can I use same external hard drive for Mac and PC?

Want to use one external drive for both your Windows PC and your Mac machine? Windows uses NTFS while Mac OS uses HFS, and they’re incompatible with each other. However, you can format the drive to work with both Windows and Mac by using the exFAT filesystem.

Can you move external hard drive from Mac to PC?

You can use an external hard drive to transfer files from your Mac to a PC, or between any other types of computers. External hard drives are particularly useful for transferring a large amount of data that won’t fit on a smaller storage device, such as a USB flash drive or optical disc.

Can I use a Mac formatted external hard drive on PC?

A hard drive formatted for use in a Mac has either an HFS or HFS+ file system. For this reason, a Mac-formatted hard drive is not directly compatible, nor readable by a Windows computer.

How do I convert an external hard drive from Mac to Windows?

Right-click in the unallocated space on the initialized disk and select New Simple Volume. Use the wizard to create a partition with the NTFS or FAT32 file system. The drive will now be formatted for use by Windows systems. There will be no space wasted by protected Mac partitions.

How do I format a hard drive from Mac to Windows without losing data?

Answer: A: Answer: A: Open Disk Utility, select your drive from the left side list, then click on the Enable Journaling icon in the toolbar. This will do what you want without losing anything.

Can a Mac read a Windows hard drive?

Macs can easily read PC-formatted hard disk drives. Your old external Windows PC drive will work great on the Mac. Apple has built OS X Yosemite and some previous OS X releases with the ability to read from those disks just fine.

Does reformatting a hard drive erase it?

Formatting a disk does not erase the data on the disk, only the address tables. However a computer specialist would be able to recover most or all the data that was on the disk before the reformat.

How can I read a Mac hard drive on a PC?

To use HFSExplorer, connect your Mac-formatted drive to your Windows PC and launch HFSExplorer. Click the “File” menu and select “Load File System From Device.” It will automatically locate the connected drive, and you can load it. You’ll see the contents of the HFS+ drive in the graphical window.

How do I read a Mac hard drive on a PC?

Double click the new hard drive icon on the desktop. The contents of the external NTFS-formatted hard drive are displayed. Drag files from the hard drive to copy them to the local Mac hard drive, or double click them to read them directly from the hard drive.