- Mac External Hard Drive On Windows
- View External Drive Windows 10
- Install Windows 10 On External Hard Drive Mac
- External Hard Drive For Mac On Windows
Sep 08, 2020 How to create an external hard disk compatible on Mac and Windows? Connect the drive to the Mac. Open Disk Utility. The easiest way to do that is to hit CMD and the spacebar at the same time and type in Disk Utility. In disk utility, you will have an internal and external drive Select the drive. Here are the steps: Step 1: Start the process by connecting the external hard drive with the device appropriately. Make sure that your. Step 2: In the Windows main menu, click the option of. Windows 10 typically lists an external drive as Disk 2 along with the next successive alphabetic label if you don’t have any other internal disk-based storage. Windows 10 lists optical drives.
By default, your Windows PC can’t access the drives that are formatted in the Mac file system. It’s easier for your PC to read NTFS (Windows file system) and FAT32/exFAT, however, the Windows 10 can’t actually read drives formatted in other file systems that are likely coming from Mac (HFS+) or Linux (ext4).
The UFS+ is the file system by Apple’s Macintosh and if you are using a Mac-formatted drive on your PC, chances are it’s not readable by Microsoft Windows 10. The macOS Extended (HFS+) is a file system used by Mac and it can only be read by default in Mac systems, unlike Windows. If you are trying to use a drive formatted in Mac on Windows 10, it’s possible. Here’s how.
How To Read Mac’s UFS Drive On Windows 10
To read drives formatted in Mac on your Windows 10 PC, here’s what you need to do, just follow these simple steps.
- Get this free tool called HFSExplorer for Windows.
- Install and launch the program, you will need Java to use this software. It will prompt you if your system doesn’t have Java installed, if you already have, it will run normally.
- Connect your Mac-formatted drive on your Windows PC and select ‘Load file system from the device’ from File in the menu bar. Click Load.
- You will see the contents of the HFS+ drive in the app window. Choose the files or folders you want to copy, click Extract to copy and save to a specified folder, the files or folders will be copied to the location you choose on your PC.
Don’t expect any fancy UI or any system integration that allows you to access the drive from the Windows Explorer just like you usually do for other drives. This tool is good if you need to get a few files out of the drive, not recommended if you are looking for a chunk of files to extract out of it, the process might be a tad difficult and time-consuming.
Also, the HFSExplorer doesn’t support write access to the drive, if you want to copy anything in the drive, it’s not possible with this tool. Use it if you want to copy the data from the drive. Check on the alternative if you want the read and write access with better integration.
Better Alternative?
An alternative to it is the Paragon HFS+ software that seamlessly integrates into the Windows such that you will be using the drive as you normally do with other drives supported by Windows. Plugging in the drive, and you will see a device connected and shown in the explorer along with your internal drive.
- Get the software Paragon HFS+ for Windows and install it as you would do for other Windows programs.
- That’s it, restart the PC and connect the drive.
- You will be able to see the drive in the explorer which can be accessed by the keyboard shortcut Windows logo key + E or double click on This PC on desktop.
The only downside is that this software is not free, you will spend about $19.95 for it, however, the good part is it offers a 10-day free trial to give it a try. You can either save the money if you are just copying the data or get the write access with system-wide integration for a mere cost.
Mac External Hard Drive On Windows
In the end, it’s now possible to use the Mac drive on Windows, although not in a straightforward way, you may end up using the apps for file transfers or unlikely buying out softwares. It is recommended to format the drive in the exFAT system to get things easier, this helps if you are using the drive frequently on both the systems.
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An external hard drive that supports both Windows and Mac operating systems can be extremely helpful to users who work on both the operating systems. However, Windows was mainly optimized for NTFS (New Technology file system) format, on the other hand, APFS was created for the Mac OS.As we all know NTFS is not compatible with Mac and similarly APFS does not get along with Windows. Fortunately, you could create an external hard disk which is compatible with both Windows and Mac OS with the help of this article. This does not require any third-party application or assistance of any additional software. Let’s get down to make the external hard drive compatible with Mac and Windows.
How to create an external hard disk compatible on Mac and Windows?
Lets us first understand how to make the external hard drive compatible with Mac and Windows? using exFAT and Dual formatting?
![Mac Mac](https://www.wikihow.com/images/3/39/Copy-Files-to-an-External-Hard-Drive-Step-23.jpg)
- exFAT – Formatting a hard drive with the exFAT file system. Since exFAT formatted external hard disk are readable and writable by both the operating systems
- Dual formatting – If you are a user who prefers to have both APFS and NTFS file system on a single external hard disk, you can partition and dual format the hard drive.
Steps on how to format an external drive on macOS with exFAT
- Connect the drive to the Mac.
- Open Disk Utility. The easiest way to do that is to hit CMD and the spacebar at the same time and type in Disk Utility to find the program.
- In disk utility, you will have an internal and external drive
- Select the drive you want to format and click erase.
- Give the partition a name and select exFAT for the format.
- Click Erase to finish and you will complete the procedure.
Steps on how to format an external drive on Windows with exFAT
- Connect the drive to your Windows PC.
- Open the Disk Management tool. You can do that by typing 'disk format' or 'disk management' in Windows search or going to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Create and format hard disk partitions.
- Right-click on the external drive's partition or unallocated space you want to format and choose New Simple Volume
- Follow the wizard to choose a volume size.
- Assign a drive letter.
- Choose exFAT as the file system in the Format Partition screen.
- Give the volume a new name, click next and finish to complete the procedure.
Note - Your exFAT-formatted drive or partition can now be used for both Windows and Mac. Keep in mind that using a drive frequently between Windows and Mac could increase the chances of hard disk corruption, so make sure you have a backup of the data any drive. In case if you happened to lose you will need a reliable third party application to fix the issue.
How to Dual Format an external hard disk?
Let us understand how to make the external hard drive compatible with Mac and Windows using dual formatting?
If the user desires to use NTFS, APFS or HFS+ for any specific reasons and does not want to opt for exFAT, there is another option. Instead of formatting a drive with a single file system, the user can create two partitions and format those with NTFS, APFS, HFS+ or any other file systems.
How to partition external hard disk on Mac?
- Connect the external hard disk to the Mac.
- Click on Disk utility. Select the drive from the left sidebar, then click the Partition tab.
- Under Partition layout, select '2 Partitions.'
- The user can adjust the size of the partition based on the desired requirement.
- Once adjusting based on the desired storage requirement, the user will able to choose the preferred operating system (NTFS or APFS) and complete the procedure.
Plug in scan mac. How to partition external hard disk on Windows?
- Plug the external hard drive into your Windows PC.
- Open the Start menu and search for Disk Management.
- Select the search result and the Disk Management utility will launch. In the left sidebar, you should see your hard drive and its partitions
- Select the drive which you want to be made into a partition. Right-click the Windows partition and select Shrink partition.
- In the Format dialog box, under File System, select the desired file system (NTFS). Click OK and complete the format process.
View External Drive Windows 10
The chances of losing data in this scenario are comparatively high if anything goes wrong in formatting. It is recommended to have a backup of your data before performing this action. If you don’t have a backup you will need a professional hard drive recovery software to recover your lost or formatted data.
Remo hard drive recovery software is one such professional hard drive recovery tool which can easily help you to recover data from your lost or formatted hard disk. The tool supports more than 300 file formats with which you can be sure of recovering files of any format. The tool comes with two types of scan features, Normal scan, and Deep Scan which scans the hard drive sector by sector which ensures hassle-free data recovery.
![External External](https://www.howtogeek.com/thumbcache/2/200/522fa80901312d95713b4e2473b458bd/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/img_55315b2aa0016.jpg)
Install Windows 10 On External Hard Drive Mac
FAQ
1. What is Hard format and Quick Format? Is data recovery possible in these scenarios?
- Hard format - A hard format is an option in Windows, which allows the user to format the whole disk/partition. The disadvantages of this feature are that the data residing on this disk is permanently lost and cannot be recovered
- Quick Format - Quick format is a feature in which the Windows allows the user to format the disk or partition. Know more on how to perform quick format and recover data after quick format here.
2. How can I use NTFS on Mac?
A. Yes, you can use NTFS on Mac only in read-only mode and it cannot write or overwrite any of these files.
A. Yes, you can use NTFS on Mac only in read-only mode and it cannot write or overwrite any of these files.
External Hard Drive For Mac On Windows
3. How can I use APFS on Windows?
A. Windows is capable of understanding the file format and can read the APFS, but cannot write or overwrite any of these files.
A. Windows is capable of understanding the file format and can read the APFS, but cannot write or overwrite any of these files.