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Is there a way to format the an external hard drive to write from both Windows and Mac?
I just purchased this computer and have used Windows before, so all my external drives are formatted NTFS. Will I be able to write to these drives? I remember plugging one into a freind's mac and we could not, but this was a while ago. Is there a way to format the drive to write from both windows and mac? #apple #windows
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patrickneville's pick
FAT32 let's both OS X and Windows read/write files. But FAT32 is limited to a 4 GB file size limit.
If you're only going to use it with a Mac, format is as HFS+ (Journaled).
Check out these links on alternatives that lets you write to NTFS.
MacFUSE:
code.google.com/p/macfuse/
code.google.com/p/macfuse/wiki/FAQ
Google:
www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&i...
If you're only going to use it with a Mac, format is as HFS+ (Journaled).
Check out these links on alternatives that lets you write to NTFS.
MacFUSE:
code.google.com/p/macfuse/
code.google.com/p/macfuse/wiki/FAQ
Google:
www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&i...
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patrickneville's pick
You'll have to format to FAT32. It'll be easier to do this on the mac then the windows machine because windows doesn't like to format large partitions.
Be warned though. FAT32 won't allow files over 4gig. Kind of a downfall if you like having large files.
Be warned though. FAT32 won't allow files over 4gig. Kind of a downfall if you like having large files.
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patrickneville's pick
Another option is to install MacDrive on Windows 7 and just keep the drive formatted HFS+ for OS X. Otherwise, if you want to keep them NTFS I would use spotdart's suggestion and use NTFS-3G, I've used that before and it's a good application, supposedly the paid version has faster transfer rates although I've never been in that big of rush so I've never paid for it.
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You might try something like NTFS-3G which will allow macs to read/write NTFS drives:
www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utiliti...
Fair warning I had some serious trouble with NTFS-3G on a brand new iMac which I understand was a problem with the 64-bit kernel. Ultimately I uninstalled it.
www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utiliti...
Fair warning I had some serious trouble with NTFS-3G on a brand new iMac which I understand was a problem with the 64-bit kernel. Ultimately I uninstalled it.
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If you are using a WIndows 7 machine and a Snow Leopard machine, your best option is to format it with the new exFAT partition. Both operating systems can read exFAT, and it gets rid of the 4GB file size limit.
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Paragon's NTFS for Mac does the job. I have it on all my Macs and it reads NTFS drives. This is a better approach for hard drives as you might need to deal with files that are >4G sometimes. For flash drives, FAT32 is cross platform compatible.
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