• Portable Hard Drives For Mac
• Seagate Drives For Mac
• Flash Drives For Mac

If my instincts are right, you are working or living in an environment that consists of both Windows and Mac computers. Well, this is inevitable considering that we are living at the helm of the golden age of information- where different operating systems are an indispensable requisite. The problem is, this versatility brings forth incompatibility. And more often than not, it results in a continuous and pestering headache more so when copying and transferring files.

The HFS+ file system is supported by macOS High Sierra and previous releases of macOS and OS X. In the newest macOS 10.15 Catalina, however, things have changed and now the supported drive types are the Apple File System (APFS) drives. This new file system unleashes the full potential of SSD drives for faster storage, easy retrieval of files, and securing files. Features added to this new file management system include snapshots, crash reporting, space sharing, and cloning to name but a few. Mac users upgrading to the Catalina need to convert their drives to APFS first.

Natively, Windows PC do not even 'see' APFS and HFS+ formatted partitions. You could convert the drive to FAT32 or exFAT that both Mac and Windows can read. However, this is impossible if the HFS+ or APFS has over 1T data. What should you do? Here is a tutorial help you read Mac drive on Windows.

1. In this guide to the best external hard drives for Macs, we look at the top devices for plugging in and expanding the storage space of your Mac or MacBook. While there's a lot to love about Macs.
2. Many printers and scanners use driverless technologies such as AirPrint or IPP Everywhere, which don't require additional drivers on your Mac. But third-party drivers might still be available for older devices that do require a driver. Always check for software updates before connecting the device to your Mac for the first time.
3. In this tutorial, we learn how to find the C drive on a Mac computer. Unfortunately, Mac does not label their drives with letters like other computer systems do. You can name your drives anything y.
4. If you have an old flash drive or one that was formatted to work with Windows or another operating system, you can still format your flash drive to work on a Mac. Volume Format Most manufacturers use the FAT 32 or MS-DOS (FAT) volume format.
5. Install Windows on your Mac. Boot Camp is a utility that comes with your Mac and lets you switch between macOS and Windows. Download your copy of Windows 10, then let Boot Camp Assistant walk you through the installation steps.
6. Discover the world of hard drives and storage options for Mac. Compare Apple hard drives and models for office or home and shop online.

If a Windows PC is your main computer and you are looking for a way to read and write APFS formatted disks directly on it, APFS for Windows by Paragon is your idealist choice. This software goes against the grid to make it possible for you to read and write on such disks on your PC despite the fact that APFS formatted disks are natively incompatible with Windows devices.

All you have to do is download APFS for windows and install it on your PC. After installation is complete, plug in your APFS drive and it will automatically show up on file explorer. Once set up, it grants you get unlimited access to all APFS type hard disks, flash drives and Solid State Drives directly on your windows personal computer without involving any more applications. You also enjoy the following features with APFS for windows:

• Fail-proof interoperability across compatible software and hardware.
• Prevention of data loss and a guarantee of data integrity.
• Reduced overheads, effective flow control, and minimized congestion.
• Economical usage of memory, processor and disk resources.

MacDrive is arguably one of the most versatile and reliable drives in the market. It comes with the capability to read both APFS and HFS file formats. Moreover, it is very intuitive and user-friendly. After you have downloaded and fully installed it on your PC, it will maintain an active background process so that every time you plug in an APFS or HFS drive it will automatically appear on the file explorer tab.

Paragon Driver for macOS (10.10 and above) This driver provides write access for Seagate external drives in Mac OS without having to reformat.

It is also equipped with cutting edge features that make it possible for you to create partitions from your windows PC. And in case your drive encounters any bugs or errors, there is a repair feature to take care of that. It can also handle virtually any drive from HDDs, Floppies to flash drives.

As a way to ensure customer satisfaction, MacDrive offers 5 days free trial and 30-day money-back guarantee just in case it was not what you were looking for.

UFS is a benchmark software with the capacity to handle complex raid systems and virtual disks. Moreover, it can also facilitate data access to both APFS and HFS formatted drives giving you unlimited access to most Mac-formatted drives. Though it is not possible to view files on window file explorer, it comes with a user-friendly where you can’t enter simple commands and get direct access. You can also use the inbuilt search function to look files and once you get them, “right-click” and select “save this object to”. You can then choose a path and begin transferring your data.

There is a free version for UFS explorer but this comes with limited features. If you want to unleash its full potential, you would rather opt to purchase a standard license which goes for only $25.

This is perhaps the best software that will grant you full and unlimited access to write and read HFS formatted partitions on virtually any MBR or GPT drives. And though it is a premium app that needs a subscription, it comes with an exceptionally high HFS stability, performance, full compatibility with Boot camp drivers, and automounting, a universal installer for both 64 and 32 bit systems disk management through a console and journaling support. With it, you have the freedom to write, copy and edit files SSD, HDD and flash drives formatted with Mac OS Extented.

To use it, download HFS for windows (here) and install on your PC. Once the set up is complete, mount your drive and it will be visible on file explorer. Other benefits include:

• Unlimited access to HFSX and HFS drives.
• User-friendly. You just need to mount your disk and access all of your files.
• Economical use of disk resources, processor and memory.

Have you heard of exFAT? Well, this is the new kid in school when it comes to file formats used in mobile devices and flash drives. It is ideal for you if you constantly use both Mac and Windows computer. Unlike FAT32, its code is light since it is optimized for flash drives. This means that it will not stall or slow your computer when running. ExFAT will come in handy when you are looking for bigger file sizes which its predecessor FAT32 can’t handle. In addition, it offers more compatibility. Even so, keep in mind that formatting your drive will erase all the data on it. Therefore, it is advisable to format your external drive as a last result and only if all the devices you have support exFAT.

Bottom line
With so many ways to break the incompatibility barrier between Mac and Windows, you should never be limited whenever you want to transfer files across devices. I mean with these tools, you have unlimited access to all of your data regardless of where it is.

Summary :

Want to format an external hard drive for Mac and Windows PC? Do you know how to do this work easily? This post will show you specific methods to make external hard drive compatible with Mac and PC, which are easy and safe to complete.

As we know, external hard drives are widely used to backup data or interchange files among different computers. Well, is there an external hard drive that could be shared between Mac and Windows PC? Of course, there is. Actually, most external hard disks could be compatible with Mac and PC as long as you format them correctly.

Why Need to Format External Hard Drive for Mac and PC

To put it simply, if you want to share external hard drive between Mac and PC, you need to format an external hard drive for Mac and PC.

Currently, hard drives for Windows PC are always formatted with NTFS, while hard disks for Mac are formatted with HFS+. However, when we connect a NTFS formatted disk to Mac, Mac OS X doesn't allow us to write files to the drive neither edit files, though it can read a NTFS drive. Similarly, Windows OS will ask us to format the HFS+ formatted drive when we connecting such a disk, let along edit files saved on HFS+ formatted hard disks unless we resort to third party programs.

But luckily, there are file systems well supported by both Mac and Windows PC, and they are FAT32 (it might be called MS-DOS on Mac) and exFAT. As long as we format the external hard drive to one of these 2 file systems, it can be shared between Mac and Windows.

Further Reading

Both FAT32 and exFAT have advantages and disadvantages.

FAT32: FAT32 works with all versions of Windows, Mac OS, Linux, game consoles, etc.

However, single files on a FAT32 drive can't be larger than 4GB. If your external drive saves files larger than 4GB or you plan to save larger files to this drive, converting to FAT32 is not recommended.

In addition, a FAT32 partition must be not more than 32GB if you create it in Windows Disk Management. How to get photoshop for free mac. Of course, there is free partition manager that can help create a FAT32 volume up to 2TB, which also functions correctly.

exFAT: exFAT has very large file size and partition size limits, which means it's a good idea to format your external hard drive to exFAT.

Nevertheless, a lot of users complained that exFAT is slow, and they highly suggest using FAT32 if you can avoid file size constraints.

Three Options for Accessing NTFS Drives on Mac

Paid Third-Party Drivers

Some paid third-party NTFS drivers for Mac can be used to access NTFS drives on Mac. They work well and they have better performance than the free solutions which will be mentioned in the following part. Paragon NTFS for Mac is such a driver.

Besides, you can also use the paid third-party file system converters to convert NTFS to FAT32 or exFAT which are compatible with both Mac and PC. MiniTool Partition Wizard is one representative.

Free Third-Party Drivers

FUSE for macOS is a free and open-source NTFS driver that can enable write support. But, this solution is slower relatively. And the automatically mounting NTFS partitions in read-write mode can be a security risk for your Mac computer.

Apple’s Experimental NTFS-Write Support

The Mac OS has an experimental support for writing to NTFS drives. Usually, it is disabled by default and needs some messing around in the Mac terminal to enable it.

It doesn’t work properly all the time and could lead to potential issues with your NTFS file system. For example, it had corrupted data before. Thus, we don’t suggest using this tool and we believe it is disabled by this reason.

Here, we recommend using the paid third-party tools since they are easy-to-use and can do good work for you.

Then, we will introduce these three options for you in the following content.

The Best Paid Third-Party Driver: Paragon NTFS for Mac

Paragon NTFS for Mac can write, edit, delete, copy, or move files on NTFS volumes from your Mac computer. It offers a 10-day free trial. If you want to use it all the time, you need to pay for it.

With it, you don’t have to fiddle with terminal commands to mount partitions manually. Additionally, it can mount partitions automatically and safely. More importantly, it can code with the potential corruption. If you purchase a Seagate drive, you can even get a free download of Paragon NTFS for Mac.

All in all, it does its works well and gives you good user’s experience.

The Best Free Third-Party Drivers: FUSE for macOS

FUSE for macOS is a free solution to access NTFS on Mac. But it is less secure.

If you want to make automatically mount NTFS partitions in read-write mode on Mac, you need to temporarily disable the System Integrity Protection and replace one of Apple’s built-in tools with a binary that is more vulnerable to attack. Thus, your Mac is in danger when using this driver.

However, you can use it to manually mount NTFS partitions in read-write mode if you never mind using the Terminal. This will be safer, but you need to do more work. You can go to google the steps and see how complex they are.

Apple’s Experimental NTFS-Writing Support: Don’t Do This, Seriously

Although we mentioned this method in our article, we still don’t recommend it because it is the least tested. It is just for educational purposes, and it is available on Mac OS 10.12 Sierra. Perhaps, it will be unstable forever.

How to Quickly Format External Hard Drive for Mac and PC without Losing Data

Another way to access NTFS drive on Mac is to convert the NTFS/HFS+ to FAT/exFAT. Then, the drive can be used on both Mac and PC.

There should be some important data on the drive. To keep it safe, you can choose this best NTFS/HFS+ to FAT/exFAT converter: MiniTool Partition Wizard.

How to Convert NTFS to FAT32 or exFAT Without Data Loss

To format hard drive for Mac and Windows without data loss, we suggest using MiniTool Partition Wizard and its 'Convert NTFS to FATS32' function. If you are a personal user, you can try its Professional Edition.

Step 1: Run MiniTool Partition Wizard

Download this software to your computer. Then, you can open the software and input the license key to the pop-out window to get its Professional Edition.

Step 2: Convert NTFS to FAT32 with This Software

After running the program successfully, we can see its main interface as follows:

Here, please select the NTFS partition of external hard drive and choose 'Convert NTFS to FAT' feature from the left action pane. If there is more than one NTFS partition, convert all of them one by one.

At last, click 'Apply' button to make the change executed.

When MiniTool Partition Wizard shows it applies the change successfully, the original NTFS will finally become a FAT32 partition.

By this way, you can easily format an external hard drive for Mac and PC without losing any data. Then, you can share external hard drive between Mac and PC

You Can Convert NTFS to exFAT in 3 Steps

However, if you want to convert NTFS to exFAT to make external hard drive compatible with Mac and PC, 3 steps are required.

Step 1: Transfer Data out from External Hard Drive

You can choose to copy and paste those files to other external devices or internal hard disk of Windows, but it will cost much time. Instead, you can use MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition to create a copy for your external drive, which is faster.

If there is only one NTFS partition on external hard drive, refer to the tutorial Copy Partition to get instructions. However, if there is more than one NTFS partition, view Copy Disk to get specific operations.

Step 2: Create exFAT Partition with MiniTool Partition Wizard

The Free Edition of this software also enables you to do this job.

Firstly, you need to delete the partition by using this software. Just open the software to enter its main interface. Then, choose the target partition and click 'Delete Partition' from the left action pane. After that, you should click 'Apply' to keep this change.

Secondly, the target partition will become unallocated. Here, you need to choose that partition and click on 'Create Partition' from the left action pane.

Thirdly, you will see a pop-out window. Here, you can choose 'exFAT' from the 'File System' setting option. At the same time, you can also set some other parameters for this partition, including 'Partition Label', 'Drive Letter', 'Size And Location'. After that, please click on 'OK'.

Fourthly, you will go back to the main interface. Then, please click on 'Apply' to save these changes.

Finally, an exFAT partition will be created on your external hard disk so that it could be shared between Mac and Windows PC

Step 3: Transfer Data back to External Drive

If you want to share files that you have backed up between Mac and PC, now please transfer these files back to external hard drive.

How to Convert HFS+ to FAT32 or exFAT without Losing Data

Vmplayer for mac. Besides, you can format an external hard drive for Mac and Windows by converting HFS+ to FAT32 or exFAT without losing any data.

Step 1: Backup Data in HFS+ Partition on Mac

Just transfer all useful files out from the external hard drive to other devices on Mac. Of course, if you have a backup already, ignore this step.

Step 2: Create a FAT32 or exFAT Partition on Windows PC

Some people may ask why create such partitions on Windows rather than Mac. That is because there are cases reporting FAT32 (MS-DOS) or exFAT partitions created on Mac did not work well on Windows.

Please skip to Solution 1: Format External Hard Drive to FAT32 to get steps to create a FAT32 partitions or go back to Step 2: Create exFAT Partition with MiniTool Partition Wizard to get operations to create an exFAT partition.

Portable Hard Drives For Mac

How to Make an Empty External Drive Compatible with Mac and PC

If there is no file saved on your external hard drive, how to make external hard drive compatible with Mac and PC?

It's very easy to share it between Mac and PC and you also need a Windows computer, a Mac machine, and the free partition manager MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition.

There are 3 solutions for this case, so please choose the one you like most to format external hard drive Windows 10/8/7.

Solution 1: Format External Hard Drive Windows 10/8/7 to FAT32

Since users are unable to create a FAT32 partition larger than 32GB in Windows Disk Management, they need to use MiniTool Partition Wizard Free.

Please download and install this program on your Windows computer to format an external hard drive for Mac and PC.

Firstly, open the software to enter its main interface as follows. Here, please select the NTFS partition or HFS+ partition of external hard drive, and click 'Delete Partition' feature from the left action pane. If there are multiple partitions on the external disk, please select the disk and click 'Delete All Partitions' feature instead. After that, an unallocated space will be released.

Secondly, you can create one or more FAT32 partitions in unallocated space. Select the unallocated space and choose 'Create Partition' feature from the left side.

Seagate Drives For Mac

Then, you should choose 'FAT32' from the 'File System' option in the pop-out window. Meanwhile, you can set properties for this new partition and click 'OK' to go back to the main window of Partition Wizard.

Flash Drives For Mac

At last, click 'Apply' button to make all changes performed.

Solution 2: Format External Hard Drive Windows 7/8/10 to exFAT

Firstly, please delete the NTFS or HFS+ partition in either MiniTool Partition Wizard or Windows Disk Management to release unallocated space. Then, you can create an exFAT partition with MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition by following steps introduced in the section Step 2: Create exFAT Partition with MiniTool Partition Wizard.

Once a FAT32 or exFAT partition is created on your external hard drive, you can share it on both Mac and Windows PC.

Solution 3: Create One HFS+ Partition for Mac and One NTFS Partition for Windows

Alternatively, you can create 2 partitions on the external hard drive: one is for Mac, and the other is for Windows. As to size for each partition, it depends on your own demands. By this way, you can easily format an external hard drive for Mac and Windows.

Step 1: Create a NTFS Partition and a FAT32 Partition

Please run MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition, then delete all the original NTFS or HFS+ partition(s), and create a new NTFS partition as well as a FAT32 partition, and the latter will be formatted to HFS+ in Mac machine.

Then, select the external hard drive and choose 'Delete All Partitions' to create an unallocated space.

Here, select the unallocated space and choose 'Create Partition' feature from the left action pane.

Now, please specify partition label (Windows is recommended), partition type (primary or logical), drive letter, file system (NTFS), cluster size, and partition size (you can change the length of the handle to adjust partition size). Then, click 'OK' to continue.

Now, you can see a NTFS partition is created. Please use the same way to create a FAT32 partition labeled with Mac. At last, click 'Apply' button to make all changes performed.

Step 2: Format the FAT32 Partition to HFS+ Partition on Mac

Please go to Utilities → Disk Utility to get the window below:

Then, select the external hard drive and click 'Partition' tab on the top.

Now, find the FAT32 partition and format it to OS X Extended (Journaled), which is the desired HFS+. Finally, click 'Apply' button to make all changes performed.

After NTFS partition and HFS+ partition are created on your external hard drive, it can be shared between Mac and Windows PC.

Bottom Line

Are you planning to format an external hard drive for Mac and PC? If yes, now try one of our methods to make external hard drive compatible with Mac and PC.

Should you have any problem, just feel free to leave us a message in comment part below or send an email to [email protected].