Just bought a 4TB hard drive to store my photos. I need the space to run Boot camp. Do i need paragon software from seagate or can i just use the Apple software.
I want to partition the drive to work with windows and Mac.
Macbook (2015 or later)
Some Seagate drives come pre-formatted as NTFS. Macs can read NTFS drives as standard but as standard cannot write to NTFS drives. To 'solve' this Seagate has in the past done a deal with Paragon to include a 'free' copy of Paragon's NTFS software which lets Macs also write to NTFS disks.
It is possible to erase and format the drive in other formats, however in most cases the same issue applies in a different form. For example you could format it as Mac OS Extended aka HFS+ but then Windows would have a problem using it. You could format it as FAT but this does not support file sizes bigger than 4GB which these days is not exceptional. You could format it as ExFAT, both Mac and Windows can read and write to ExFAT but Linux as standard cannot. Also there are sometimes other compatibility issues with ExFAT but actually it is widely used for camera memory sticks these days. ExFAT does support file sizes bigger than 4GB.
If you do end up using the Paragon software you need a new enough version to support the version of Mac operating system you are using. It is possible the version included with a Seagate drive might be out of date and hence not support Mojave.
(Yes you could have both an NTFS and HFS+ partition but the Mac would only be able to access the HFS+ and Windows only the NTFS one. The Mac cannot format as NTFS but could create a FAT one which in Windows you could erase and convert to NTFS.)
Some Seagate drives come pre-formatted as NTFS. Macs can read NTFS drives as standard but as standard cannot write to NTFS drives. To 'solve' this Seagate has in the past done a deal with Paragon to include a 'free' copy of Paragon's NTFS software which lets Macs also write to NTFS disks.
It is possible to erase and format the drive in other formats, however in most cases the same issue applies in a different form. For example you could format it as Mac OS Extended aka HFS+ but then Windows would have a problem using it. You could format it as FAT but this does not support file sizes bigger than 4GB which these days is not exceptional. You could format it as ExFAT, both Mac and Windows can read and write to ExFAT but Linux as standard cannot. Also there are sometimes other compatibility issues with ExFAT but actually it is widely used for camera memory sticks these days. ExFAT does support file sizes bigger than 4GB.
If you do end up using the Paragon software you need a new enough version to support the version of Mac operating system you are using. It is possible the version included with a Seagate drive might be out of date and hence not support Mojave.
(Yes you could have both an NTFS and HFS+ partition but the Mac would only be able to access the HFS+ and Windows only the NTFS one. The Mac cannot format as NTFS but could create a FAT one which in Windows you could erase and convert to NTFS.)
Paragon is for read/write access from a Mac for NTFS formatted drives. You don't need this to set up Windows with Boot Camp.
With Boot Camp, you section out part of, or an entire drive as FAT32. Then you boot to the Windows installer, select the partition or drive you want Windows on and format it as NTFS from within the Windows installation routine. After the format, you continue on installing Windows.
Absolutely do not use the utilities that come with drives. Use Disk Utility to partition and format the drive for your needs.
If this is an external drive, you cannot install Windows unless it's the Enterprise version. This is a limitation of Windows itself.
You'll need it to write to NTFS volumes from Mac OS X. Otherwise, no.
(167561)
Yes, it can be partitioned, unless it's a network drive, in which case installing Paragon NTFS won't matter.
(167562)
ok so i want to free up space on my Mac pro by moving all my photo files and other media files to the 4TB drive. I thought i could easily do this by partitioning the seagate drive to allow me to save Mac and windows files and backup my mac pro.
Once i have the space on the Mac book i can run the bootcamp to work with windows programs i need for work.
so If i understand you correctly the seagate drive cannot be partitioned and each partition individually formatted using disk utility.
This means i must use the seagate program.
Thanks for your input. Now i am aware i do not need the Seagate software to operate a 4TB external drive.
Just to clarify i was planning to install windows 10 on my MacBook pro hard drive using boot camp and partition the 4 TB external hard drive with one partition Mac journaled and the other ex fat using disk utility.
DO I NEED PARAGON software FOR A SEAGATE 4TB HARD DRIVE
