Can the hard drive be formatted in exfat so that Mac and Windows machines can access the same files?
912152
The drive already comes formatted to be access for both mac and windows no changes needed.
489054
macs can read and write to pc hards drives but need to be formated in fat32 i think. i have a pc hard drive that is split for time machine and as a backup. my pc hard drives i can read them but cant write since they are in wrong format. but those hard drives if i wanted could be reformatted so i can write to them.
301969
I re-read your question. It sounds like you want to use it on BOTH a MAC and a PC from interchangeably. One to do this which I am familiar with is to format the drive to FAT32. This makes it readable and writable by both mac and windows os...however there are file size limitations with FAT32...but as long as your files are smaller than a couple GB you should be good. There are other solutions....but would be best if you conduct the research yourself.
900003
Edward, if you format the drive as NTFS, you would only be able to view its contents on a Mac. Writing to the drive would not be possible.
838528
I'm running windows 8 and the drive gives the option to format to exFat. This allows you to use the drive on both PC and MAC without the 4GB file max.
1339934
@TonyI 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?
298147
With the built in utilities on Windows or Mac, you can easily format this drive to whatever you like. OS X for Mac or NTFS for Windows. Unfortunately, those can only be read by their respective operating systems. If I remember correctly, FAT32 can be read by either O/S, but it has some limitations like 4GB maximum file sizes. There is a driver by Paragon (I think it costs $20 if you want to do it legally) that allows Mac to read your NTFS drives or vice versa. This would be another option if you need your drive to operate with both O/Ss. BTW, all drives have this limitation, and all drives can be formatted. As they love to charge more for MAC stuff (presumably because MAC people think they are cool, sometimes are ignorant, but don't care about cost), I would always recommend buying a PC drive and reformatting it to MAC if necessary.
149061
Yes you can - coming from being a Dell user I had tons of documents and external hard drives. I purchase Paragon www.paragon-software.com which allows you to use both types on both Windows and Mac. It cost me about $20.00! Well worth the cost if you don't want the hassle of having to re format your external drives and change your documents.
1518708
You should be able to access most files that have a common app (Mac and PC) - the challenge will be saving any updates.Typically PC formatted external drives are FAT32, which will convert to the MAC, but not able to be write enabled back.The exception will be music and photos, they should be available for iTunes and iPhoto imports.
83038
I'm a Mac user not Windows. However, I believe it does not matter what system you are running as long as it's formatted correctly.
2006924
This Drive is NTFS formatted so it will not work on MAC. For MAC system you will need either FAT32 or MAC journal formatted.
704152
No, I don't think you can. These drives are usually either for a Mac or PC and not interchangeable. I don't know of any that you could use for the purpose you want. Have you looked into something like Carbonite? There are others like this out there. This is a remote program to store your files and then you can get them from anywhere. You could look into this. It takes quite a while to save your files initially but then works in the background after that. Congrats for switching to a Mac. There is a learning curve but I'm sure, in the end, you will be glad you did!
668780
Yes, of course. You have to format it in ExFAT, it supported by Win7 and Mac without problem.Also you can format any flash drive in ExFAT, it allows files more than 4Gb
1548110
Yes you can. It would need to be reformatted in order to work with both systems. It's default format is NTFS (Windows friendly, not Mac OS). Using a Windows PC and possibly the Mac you can reformat it to exFAT which will allow read/write on both platforms.
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.
1343641
From my experience, you just refuse Time Machine for the device once, and then you can use it as a normal backup/file transfer device. Although it is true that I reformatted the drive to work with Windows and Mac using eXFAT file system.
878343
Yes but it has to be formatted. It won't work with data from both windows and Mac