How to Read a Mac-Formatted Drive on a Windows PC. Chris Hoffman @chrisbhoffman April 28, 2016. If you know you’re going to use a drive on both Mac and Windows, you should use the exFAT file system, which is compatible with both. To format the drive in Windows, right-click it in the File Explorer window and select “Format.”. Both Windows 8 and Mac OS X allow you to adjust the size of the format partitions on external hard drives. Set the number to the maximum to use the entire drive in a single partition.
Hello mokel69! Yes, you can format any given drive in FAT32 or exFAT so that it can perform both read and write processes on both PC and Mac.
FAT32 has a file limitation of 4GB, exFAT – 512TB. ExFAT can work on Mac OS X 10.6.5 and up, and on PC OS (without the expansions) – Windows 7 and up. About Time Machine, you should be able to create one separate partitions for back ups. This thread from the Apple website could help too: Still, I would recommend having a separate drive for backups, just to be as safe as possible.:) If you'd like, I could suggest you WD external drives, but it depends what kind you want, besides a 2TB+ drive, desktop or portable? Cheers!:) CKWD. Yes, exFAT is okay to use, it's the most common choice. If you like, you could research a bit on the file system and the users' experiences with it, just FYI.:) For any formatting issues in any OS X, I'm sure Apple Support will be quick to help.:) A desktop external can have more features, like having more than one bay, having RAID and JBOD options, having its very own dashboard, have the option to extend its original capacity with another drive USB connected, etc.
But portable drives are just as fine, they can be carried around, and are compact; the main aim is that you have the most convenient for you choice.:) If you'd like, you could take a look at WD's ready for Mac portable drives (My Passport): Or the PC-ready portable drives (My Passport): Hope this helps! Cheers!:) CKWD. I can explain you my situation.
![Hard Drive Format For Both Mac And Windows Reddit Hard Drive Format For Both Mac And Windows Reddit](http://i.imgur.com/5ffCdyJ.png)
I have external WD drive which is formated in NTFS + i have backup for time machine. Firstly I formatet drive with disk utility into mac partition. Then I buyed tuxera ntfs to add write support to NTFS on mac.
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With disk utility I split mac partition into 2 partitions and made second one NTFS. Then i used time machine to determine mac partition to use with backup. Now my mac automaticly starts backuping when disk is connected and if i boot into windows i can also use NTFS partition for local data and it is also recognised on other computers.
Why NTFS + tuxera over FAT32? Because no limitation and also you have to change partition on FAT32 to be able to be readable by windows because default disk utility creates different partition sheme if u select FAT32 than the one that you create in windows.