Hi Guys,
Basically, I am due to receive my mac book pro sometime soon and I purchased a WD my passport ultra external hard drive quite a while back. I just wanted to find out if this external hard drive would allow me to read and write between Windows OS and Mac OS to allow me to transfer files to and from, If not how do I go about this ?
Any help is much appreciated
Phalai17
Windows 8
If you are going to use the external hard drive on Mac only, I would format it as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and a GUID partition.
If you are going to use it on both Mac and Windows, I would format it in Windows as NTFS and use Paragon NTFS for Mac.
Write / read access to NTFS under OS X El Capitan: Paragon NTFS for Mac® 14
You could use exFat but sometimes there are compatibility problems between Windows and Mac.
Just my opinion.
Kim
Also if you are going to use exFAT, here is how you do it.
To get ExFAT to work on Windows and Mac
1. Open up Disk Utility on Mac
2. Select your external drive on the left side pane. Select the top-most item bearing the name of the external drive, not any of the partitions listed below the name of the external drive. (important)
3. Click on the "Erase" tab which is among the tabs on the top.
4. Select desired file system format using "Format" dropdown. Select exFat which works on both mac and windows, including Win10.
5. Select the desired scheme as Master Boot Record. --- this does the trick to make it detectable on windows.
6. Click "Apply"
Hope this helps.
Kim
Thanks for the quick response guys,
I just wanted to ask some of my files are larger then GB how would i go about it then as formatting it to Fat32 says that only a max of 4GB Files can be transferred.
Hi
I formatted the drive to exfat using following these steps on windows, however now the drive wont be detected on windows but is detected on mac ?
What do i do
It depends on the drive's format.
If it's formatted as FAT32 or exFAT, yes.
If it's formatted as NTFS, only if software such as Paragon NTFS is installed on the Mac.
(141592)
Use exFAT. It supports those larger files.
okay thanks are there any disadvantages of using exfat rather than fat32
The 4GB limit applies to individual file sizes, not the total size of the files. Some devices and older OSes won't be able to access exFAT volumes.
(141593)
WD external hard drive work for Mac OS and Windows?
