I'm running out of storage space on my Mac Book Pro and it's running very slowly these days. I need to upgrade to a newer version of OS X, but was told by Apple that I shouldn't do that without backing up the contents first. I thought I needed to find an external hard drive that is compatible with my very ancient operating system, but I'm seeing different information about that online. Some folks reference the fact that it's not the operating system that the external hard drive needs to be compatible with, but rather, the port connection. Others say there is sometimes software that comes with the hard drive that needs to be compatible with your OS. Which is true? Both? Here's the goal: I'd like to be able to find an external drive that works with Yosemite 10.5.5, back my computer up, install a newer operating system, then use that same external drive with the new OS. What is the best course of action in this case?
MacBook Air 13', OS X 10.10 Mac change usb format.
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The Passport Wireless hard drive is a great Wi-Fi external hard drive for people with an Apple product as some users reported difficulties connecting their device to Windows models. The Passport Wireless hard drive aims to offer incredible Internet speeds and I feel that it lives up to its promises. Right now, our top pick for best external hard drive is the Western Digital My Passport 4TB, which is a mechanical hard drive. We think it offers creatives the perfect balance of speed, reliability, portability and price for both Mac and PC users. Sometimes, deciding on the best external hard drive for PC or Mac can be a hard decision. In this day and age, external hard drives are extremely important in securing important photos, videos, and other files. Without a good external hard drive, all of your favorite files are at risk. As of recently, hard drives h.
Make your hard disk or USB flash drive compatible to both Mac and Windows PCs using this easy step by step guide.
The irony is that, by default, Windows and Mac use different file systems. While Windows uses NTFS file system, Mac hard drives are formatted with HFS file system. And they are incompatible with each other! Now, the question is how to make hard drive compatible with Mac and PCs?
Well, you can format the drive and make it as excellent cross-platform compatible to work with both Windows and Mac. This is not a difficult task at all. And if you are going to use Mac and Windows PC frequently, you will find this as very useful as any data, files, media files stored on the drive can be easily accessible from any operating system. It is just a matter of few minutes to do this. In this article, we are going to introduce you with the entire process in few simple guidelines.
How to Format a Drive for Mac and Windows PC Compatibility?
You can format any hard drive, flash drive, SSD, USB drive, that is accepted by both a Mac and Windows machine. And it is recommended to carry out the entire process on Mac OS X
- Open Disk Utility
- Attach the drive you wish to format for dual compatibility to the Mac
- Click the drive name on the left side list in Disk Utility, and then click the Erase tab
- Then click the pulldown menu alongside Format and select MS-DOS (FAT)
- Give the drive a name(optional) and click the Erase button to format the drive
External Hard Drive For Mac And Pc Interchangeable
When you want to use your drive with older versions of Windows, you may also need to set the partition scheme to Master Boot Record (MBR) for full Windows compatibility:
- Click the drive, then select Partition tab
- From the Partition Layout dropdown menu, select 1 Partition
- Click Options and choose Master Boot Record as the partition type, then click OK and Apply
'Drives format very quickly, though the total time taken will depend on the size of the drive. Remember, formatting a drive erases all data contained on it so back up important files before proceeding. In the event of not having backups, then you can recover formatted external hard drive data using a reliable Mac Hard drive recovery software. Remo Recover for Mac is recommended here.'
Hard drive can be formatted using both FAT32 and exFAT. Which one is better? FAT32 or exFAT?
Once you have done with formatting, the drive will be compatible to be read and written to on both a Mac and PC, and the resulting FAT file system is compatible with all versions of Mac OS X, and Windows, including Windows 10, it's one of the most widely recognized and usable file system formats. Ipa emulator mac.
This widespread compatibility makes FAT an ideal file system to use for external hard drives that are intended for use in environments with multiple operating systems.
One of the limitations of using FAT32 is the file size limit, which limits files on the drive to being 4GB in size or less. If you require single files to be larger than 4GB, use exFAT instead, though you will lose some compatibility with older versions of Mac OS X and Windows.
Why can't you use NTFS on Mac? Mac screen camera.
The NTFS file system is another option to use for Windows formatted drives and volumes, but it has limited compatibility with Mac OS by default. Mac users can mount and read NTFS formatted Windows drives, making NTFS compatible with the Mac on the reading and mounting front, but writing to an NTFS drive requires using either third party software or enabling NTFS write support on the Mac using an experimental functionality bundled on the Mac. So if you want to do heavy file sharing between Mac and Windows with a lot of reading and writing, it is better to format a drive as FAT32 as discussed above.
External Hard Drive For Mac And Pc Interchangeable 2017
However, backup any data on the external hard drive you want to keep on another device before formatting. Formatting a hard drive will erase all data that's stored on it. Both Windows and Mac OS X allow you to adjust the size of the format partitions on external hard drives. Set the number to the maximum to use the entire drive in a single partition. FAT32 formatted drives also work for PC and Mac sharing, in particular with older versions of both operating systems. However, Microsoft recommends against using FAT32 whenever possible in favor of exFAT.
