The Best External Hard Drives of 2018. How an external drive connects to your PC or Mac is second only to the type of storage mechanism it uses in determining how fast you'll be able to access. As of 2018, Western Digital offers no shortage of external drives for Mac computers – from the My Book Essential to the My Book Pro and the My Book Studio, nearly 30 WD drives play nicely with. This 4TB external hard drive from Seagate is compatible with Apple Time Machine, making it the perfect external storage options for those in the Apple ecosystem. Just download the Seagate Dashboard software on your laptop and you can drag and drop any movies, photos, songs, or other files. The 8 best external hard drives and SSDs for Mac and PC users in 2018; The 8 best external hard drives and SSDs for Mac and PC users in 2018. We think the overall best external hard drive for Mac and PC is the Western Digital My Passport 4TB. It offers the best balance of speed, reliability, portability and price.
1 Quick Format Vs. Full Format for a New External Hard Drive
2 Can I Back up a Mac & PC Data to the Same Hard Drive?
3 What Kind of SSD Drive Is in a MacBook?
4 Moving Ubuntu to an SSD Drive
For those who use both Microsoft Windows and Apple macOS, having a single external hard drive that is compatible with both operating systems could be very beneficial. The problem with this is that by default, Windows and macOS use different formatting styles that aren't directly compatible with each other. Windows uses the NTFS (New Technology File System) format, while macOS uses either HFS+ (Hierarchical File System Plus, a legacy format used by older versions of macOS) or APFS (Apple File System, a newer format used by recent macOS releases.)
There are some third-party solutions that can read Mac-formatted data on Windows and vice versa, but some of these are costly and may not offer 100 percent compatibility for all files. Instead of buying one of those programs, a better solution is to set up your external hard drive so that it is compatible with both your Windows machine and your Mac. This lets you create an external hard drive for Mac and PC that doesn't require any additional software to function.
Understanding Formats
When a hard drive is formatted, any data that's currently on the drive is erased and a new file system is set up for a computer's operating system to use. The file system determines how the operating system manages data, how that data is stored and what sort of storage blocks are used on the hard drive. The file system organizes the data in such a way that the operating system can access and use what it needs, so if the file system isn't supported by the OS then it has no way to actually access and read the data. In most cases, a drive with an unsupported file system won't even show up in Explorer or Finder unless you have set up your computer specifically to view the unsupported drives.
This is why it's so tricky to format for Windows and Mac on the same hard drive. Assuming that you have newer computer models and are running recent versions of Windows and MacOS, the file systems used by your computers are incompatible. This is due largely to file system optimizations that were made with a specific operating system in mind, though competition between Microsoft and Apple may play a part in the proprietary nature of their respective OS file systems. With that said, there are a few ways to format a single external hard drive for both Mac and PC use without losing data or corrupting files.
How to Format for Mac and PC
While Windows and macOS primarily use their respective proprietary file systems, both support other file systems as well. In particular, both Windows and macOS support the exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table) file system that is commonly used for flash drives and other rewritable storage. This means that you can take an external hard drive and format it with the exFAT file system and it will then be readable and writable to both you_r Windows PC and your Ma_c.
If you choose to do this, however, it is important to avoid changing the settings of the file system too much when you format. By default, exFAT uses 32KB and 128KB data clusters when reading and writing (respectively); you can change this up to 32GB per function when choosing the formatting settings. MacOS doesn't support exFAT cluster sizes greater than 1024KB, however, so if you increase the cluster size significantly then the drive will only be usable by your Windows computer. Additionally, some users have reported issues with reading exFAT drives on Windows PCs if the drives were formatted on a macOS computer; while this does not happen for all users, to avoid potential problems you may wish to format the drive on your Windows PC instead of your Mac.
Dual Formatting
If you have some specific need for NTFS or APFS/HFS+, or you simply don't wish to use exFAT to format your external drive, there is another option available to you. Instead of formatting the drive with a single file system, you can create two partitions on the drive and format each of those with a different file system. This will reduce the amount of space that's available for either Windows or Mac files, but it will ensure that you have storage space on your external drive that's in your preferred format regardless of which computer you're on at the time. If choosing this route, make sure that you have sufficient space on the hard drive to make the dual partition worthwhile. Starting with a 500GB hard drive would only give you 250GB of space per partition, assuming that the partitions were equal; you may be better off going with at least a 1TB hard drive unless your storage needs are minimal.
This can be done starting on either computer, using the operating system's disk management tools to create two partitions on the drive. If you have any data currently on the drive you should back it up before partitioning, since it could become corrupted or deleted during the process. Either shrink the current volume and add a new partition on the empty space or create two partitions if the drive hasn't been formatted yet. (If there is already a partition there but you wish to start fresh you can delete the current partition and treat the entire drive as empty space.)
Once the two partitions are created, use your Mac to format one of the partitions in either APFS or HFS+ and use your Windows PC to format the other partition in NTFS. Each computer will only be able to access its appropriately-formatted partition, though disk management software should be able to see the other partition as well if needed.
Reformatting the Drive
Should you decide at some point that you no longer want an exFAT or dual-partitioned drive, you can reformat the external drive for use by Windows or macOS at a later date. If there are multiple partitions on the drive then you should probably delete them to avoid accidentally formatting only one of the partitions instead of the entire drive. Even if there's only a single exFAT partition on the drive, make sure that you back up any files or programs that the drive contains since reformatting will erase everything contained on the drive. While there are ways to recover files and data after a format, these are not always 100 percent effective and data may be damaged, corrupted or lost completely.
When you reformat the drive, it will be similar to the process of installing the file system with which you previously formatted the drive. Connect the drive to the computer you wish to use it with and format it in the appropriate file system to meet your needs. On a Windows PC, this would be NTFS; on macOS it would be APFS(or HFS+ if you're using an older Mac.) Of course, if you're moving from a dual-partitioned drive to a drive with a single partition on it then you could choose to format the drive with exFAT instead. Just make sure that you don't adjust the cluster sizes too much if you're hoping to retain the ability to use the drive on both a Mac and a Windows PC.
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About the Author
Jack Gerard is a freelance writer and editor with over 15 years of experience writing about topics related to business and finance. His body of work includes copy for small businesses, how-to guides for entrepreneurs and even editing and copy work for international corporations.
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HomeStorageExternal StorageHow to format external hard drive for Mac and PC?
Often switch between a Mac and PC? Want to use one USB flash storage device for both? The thing is that by default, these platforms use different file systems – discs are formatted differently. Windows uses NTFS, and Mac OS uses HFS, these file systems are not compatible with each other. However there is a simple solution – you can format the drive to FAT32 or exFAT that performs better than FAT32. In the resulut, your external hard drive will work just fine with Mac and Windows.
You can format your external hard drive from either the PC or Mac. Just keep in mind if you want to use your drive also for OS X’s Time Machine backups, we advise you to format your drive through Mac because there is an additional step to make drive compatible with “Time Machine Backups”. And you can only do this with exFAT as with FAT32 Mac OS X’s Time Machine backup won’t work.
FAT32 or exFAT?
You can format your external hard drive in both – exFAT and FAT32. They both will work just fine. Mac and PC can read and write on both. However, each of these filesystems has their own pros and cons. FAT32 has a maximum 4GB file size limit, but exFAT can work with files as large as 16EB, that’s more than you will ever need. If you have to work with large video clips, games or any other kind of massive files, FAT32 may not be the best choice. Many still choose FAT32 over exFAT despite its slower performance, as it’s also compatible with Linux Os and is supported on many gaming consoles.
Once you have done with formatting, your external hard drive will be able to write and read files from both a PC and Mac. The resulting FAT32 file system will be compatible with all versions of Mac OS X, and Windows including Windows 10 back to 95. This is one of the most widely recognized file system formats.
FAT32 – a file system normally used on USB disks
exFAT – a newer file system optimized for flash devices and has improved performance overFAT32
Why I can’t use NTFS on Mac?
Internal Hard Drive For Macbook Pro
The default file system for Windows is NTFS (New Technology File System). Macs that run Snow Leopard or Lion can read data from drives that are formatted as NTFS. However, they can’t write. To make your Mac compatible writing on NTFS you have to get and install a third-party driver. So in the end, it’s possible to make your NTFS external hard drive compatible with Mac. But we advise to just format it to “FAT” file system as it’s less time consuming and easier.
Windows 7 can’t read nor write files to external drives that are formatted as HFS. To do so you also have to install third-party software like Paragon HFS+ for Windows.
How to format an External Drive in Windows
1)Connect the drive to your Windows PC.
2) Open Disk Management.
3) Right click on unallocated or any other disk partition and select “New Simple Volume”
4) Choose your desired size
5) Assign your external hard drive with any letter.
6) Choose exFAT as the file system.
7) Follow the instructions and at the end click “Finish“
How to Format an External Drive in OS X
1) Connect your external hard drive to the Mac.
2)Open Disk Utility. You can do this quickly by pressing CMD and the spacebar at the same time. Then type in “Disk Utility”.
3) Select the drive you want to format.
4) Click the Partition tab.
6)Change the Partition Layout from Current to 1 Partition.
7) Click Options, SelectMaster Boot Record, and click OK.
8)Name the hard drive with a name of your choice.
Best Mac Compatible External Hard Drive
9)Click the Format drop-down menu.
10) Select exFAT or MS-DOS FAT(FAT32).
11) At last press Apply, then click onPartition.
Hello. WD My Book would be best for desktop, Seagate Backup Plus Slim would be one of the best portable hard drives. Both are all-around decent drives and will do fine for any backup, pictures included. As for cross-platform encryption, if you intend to use the same drive on both Mac and Windows, the best option would be using a cross-platform compatible encryption tool, like VeraCrypt, while formatting the drive in exFAT to avoid compatibility issues. This is because Windows won’t recognize Mac’s native encryption and vice versa. VeraCrypt is well-renowned, so it should function well without any problems, just be prepared to learn how to use the tool. Try testing this setup with just a couple files before you perform entire backups.