Backup Mac and Windows: Can you back up a Mac and a Windows 7 computer on the same hard drive?
1913912
@Tony I believe you could. You'd have to create two partitions on the drive, one formatted in HFS+ (for Mac) and the other in NTFS (for Windows). I have never done any such thing but it might be worth a try. Of course, as these drives have come so far down in price, why not just buy two, one for Mac and the other for Windows?
1631656
I understand that you can, in theory, but have read experts who advise against it. I use mine to back up Macs (which it does perfectly), but have a separate arrangement for PCs.
514987
You should be able to use it on both Windows and Mac to read and write. You just have to reformat the drive for FAT32 rather than NTFS. I did this with my WD my passport ultra, works fine unless Toshiba has documentation that states you cannot format FAT32, but I doubt it.
1254024
Yes, I have Windows 7 and the drive is readable. However, you will need to reformat this drive (recommended anyway if only to remove the encryption software that builds in a potential way to lose all your data). If you don't, Windows Backup & Restore won't run. I also had issues using the included software to perform backups.After the reformat, everything's backing up fine. So with a bit of finagling, you should be able to use this with Windows 7.
1955091
No. There IS, however, an external portable drive from WD that DOES work with the Mac. It's called My Passport for Mac and is available 500 GB to 2 TB. Just go to the WD web site. They offer other portable backup drives for the Mac.
1778364
Yes!!! remember this is like a big pendrive! you must create two folders: Pc A and Pc B, and back up the computers inside, good luck!.
919444
yes, use Time Machine. it's the native backup app for Macs. and for the love of stuff... DON'T UPGRADE PAST SNOW LEOPARD. not because of this hard drive backup solution... don't do it because Lion, Mountain Lion and Mavericks are all crap.
478856
No, you would need an actual External Hard Drive, like a Western Digital 1 Terrabyte drive, for instance, to back up using your Mac's built in "Time Machine" software. This Superdrive is for reading and burning CD's and DVD's to and from your computer. You could burn documents, pictures, etc onto a DVD or CD, but that is much more laborious. Hope this helps.
111625
On my computers (Macbook Air and iMac) this loads as a drive and I can backup or do anything else I can do regularly with any other type of drive with this unit, up to its capacity of 128GB. Note, though, that my experience is under MacOSX and not Windows. My sense is that it should work the same way with Windows but i have not tested it. Good luck.
2081754
I wrote you a response (which is below) but I realized you might be confused as to what this product is. This isn't an external hard drive. It's a hard drive enclosure, it's basically an empty shell that holds a hard drive. You have to buy the actual drive separately You should be good in that direction PC to Mac. Windows uses the NT File System on it's drives, Mac's can read those files and copy them to the mac, but mac's can't write to a NTFS drive. So you couldn't add or save anything on to the drive. A solution for this would be to make a partition that's FAT32 both mac and windows can read and write to that, it's the file system flash drives usually have. Sometimes there's a 32GB limit on FAT32 drives so you might not be able to turn the whole drive into it. But you can partition one drive into multiple parts.
73217
It will not work on Win7 if it's been formatted to work Mac. I have a mac that I backed up mp3s and stuff on this drive. Can't get it off using my Win7 machine.
735342
No reformatting necessary as the hard drive ships in FAT32 format, which is instantly compatible with a Mac. If there is /any/ chance that you will be hooking into a Mac and a PC at some point, I'd highly recommend leaving the formatting as is (of course you can wipe the drive and then reformat it in MSDOS format through Disk Utility). You cannot easily write to a Windows (i.e., NTFS) drive but you can read it on a Mac. Have no idea as to whether a Windows machine can read/write something that is Mac formatted, however.
2253997
Also instead of formatting the drive you can install the NTFS driver for mac os provided by seagate and it will keep the drive compatible with mac and windows.
969423
I cannot answer that question, I use my G Drive as a backup only for my MAC. Sorry.
577669
Hi Shiki, This is very helpful. Is it easy to partition the drive? I just ordered this so I don't have the drive yet, but when it comes I'd like to back up both my Mac and PC... Do you know where to find information on how to partition? Thank you!
1357046
Yes, all external hard drives are compatible with both windows and mac, it just depends on how you format it.
1687903
Sorry, Mr. Kurtz, but I am unable to answer that question, unless you mean an EXternal hard drive. In that case, the answer is a definite "Yes," since I have an external hard drive connected to it for backups. I have had the computer for 2 or 3 months, and I am quite pleased with it. It was a snap to set up, and the fan is so quiet, you can barely hear it. Since it is Windows 7, I hope it lasts till 2020, when Microsoft is supposedly stopping support for Windows 7. I think you will like this computer.