Hitachi external hard drive works on PC, not on macbook.

It is probably formatted for the PC. You can read to it but not write to it. You will have to format it for just the Mac using Disk Utility or on the PC to Fat so both systems can use it.

Ciao.

I am not a Windows user but I do know that for best results, you should format the HDD on a PC in order to use it for both Mac and PC. Essentially you will have to use the PC equivalent of Apples Disk Utility. Perhaps some else will view this post and give you specific instructions or if not, start another post requesting same.

Ciao.

As noted above it is probably formatted in the windows format, ntfs, and mac os x can read from that format but can not write files to it.

If you want to use it on both systems you have a couple of options.

Format it fat32 and both systems can read & write to it. That is ok except for the fat32 files size limit which is 4GB. No file can be larger than 4GBs in size (that is file size not folder size).

Format it exfat. that is a new format created by MS to get by the fat32 files size limit. The only problem with that format is the drive can get corrupted because it only has one file allocation table and if that gets corrupted all the data on the drive will be non retrievable.

Leave the format as it is and install a program on the mac that will make the mac able to write to ntfs formatted drives.

Format it in the mac format and install a program on your windows pc that can both read and write to mac formatted drives.

Leave it as it is and connected to your windows pc and network the systems across your home network. That way your mac can read and write to it along with both of your computer being able to share files without having to move the drive from one to the other.

Of course you could and should buy a second external drive for the mac so you can do time machine backups to that mac dedicated external drive.

GillesB92 wrote:

But it's not possible to put some documents from my mac to the Hitachi.

The drive was formatted NTFS by Windows.

Mac's can read the NTFS format, but not write to it.

So to make a truly dual use drive, you take the drive back to the Windows PC and remove all the files you want to save.

Then on the oldest Windows PC version, right click and format the drive exFAT (if XP, first install the free exFAT from Microsoft) this will provide the correct partition map scheme for all machines can use and also the exFAT format which 4GB+ sized files can be used.

Once the drive is formatted, then you can take it to any 10.6.5+ Mac or Windows XP+ machine and it will work without futther trouble.

If you format exFAT on the Mac, it does it wrong. If you format on Vista, 7 or 8, then the XP machine can't use it.

If you have pre 10.6.5 Mac's then format FAT32 on the oldest Windows PC but you can't use 4GB+ files.