StannyG23
Level 1
(4 points)
Q: windows to mac
Hello, I was thinking about getting a macbook pro for school since many people have recommended them. My only concern is that my main computer at home is a windows. Can you transfer files from a mac to a windows with a simple flash drive (mainly Microsoft word, power point, and photo documents) or is it going to be a problem? I have never had a macbook so I don't really know much about this topic. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you!
Michael Black
Level 7
(24,207 points)
If transferring files back and forth between platforms you can use cloud storage such as MS Onedrive if you have an Office subscription, or dropbox, box.net or iCloud or whatever service you subscribe to. Those online storage solutions will be accessible on both platforms.
If using physical devices, the smoothest way to do that is buy something like Paragon's NTFS for Mac and install it on your Mac and format your thumb drive or portable hard drive as NTFS so both operating systems can easily read and write to and from it (if it is a small capacity thumb drive, you can also format as FAT32 since OS X will handle that fine too). Windows cannot read nor write to HFS+ though, which is OS X's native file format.
However, for backup or archive of your Mac's files, you will want separate physical devices formatted in OS X's native file format (which is HFS+).
