How do I make my Mac external hard drive compatible with my PC?

How do I make my Mac external hard drive compatible with my PC?

How to format an external drive in OS X

  1. Select the drive you want to format.
  2. Enter the amount of space you want to set aside for Time Machine.
  3. Select the new untitled partition so we can format it as exFAT for use with both Mac and Windows.
  4. Give the partition a name and select exFAT for the format.

Are all hard disks compatible with Mac?

Will hard drives formatted for PC work on a Mac? Generally, yes—for the most part, a hard drive is a hard drive, and any hard drive you buy for a Windows PC should work fine on a Mac as well.

How do I connect a hard drive to my Mac?

Connecting the Drive. Plug the hard drive into the Mac using the cable that came with it. Most hard drives connect via USB, so you’ll just need to plug the USB cable into an open port on your Mac. You’ll typically find at least one USB port along each side of the Mac.

Can I use Seagate external hard drive with Mac and PC?

Newer Seagate and LaCie branded external drives come preformatted with the exFAT file system, which allows it to be used on both Mac and Windows without reformatting the drive. If you need to use your drive on both Mac and PC then it’s best to format exFAT.

How can I fix my Mac not recognizing my WD external hard drive?

Start with the basics:

  1. Check whether the drive is properly plugged in.
  2. Faulty cable.
  3. Damaged USB or flash drive port.
  4. Reboot your Mac.
  5. Incorrectly formatted drive.
  6. Mac not formatted to display external drives on the desktop.
  7. Reset NVRAM.
  8. Check Apple’s Disk Utility to see if an external drive is showing up.

How do I get my WD hard drive to work on my Mac?

Macintosh

  1. Connect your Western Digital hard drive to your Mac computer.
  2. Double-click the drive icon that appears on your desktop.
  3. Click “Applications” from the left pane, “Utilities” from the second pane and then double click “Disk Utility” from the third pane.
  4. Click the drive from the left pane of the Disk Utility.

How do I access my Mac hard drive from Windows?

Click the “File” menu and select “Load File System From Device.” It will automatically locate the connected drive, and you can load it. You’ll see the contents of the HFS+ drive in the graphical window. Just select the files or folders you want, click “Extract,” and choose a folder.

Can portable hard drives be used with Mac and PC?

While Windows and macOS primarily use their respective proprietary file systems, both support other file systems as well. This means that you can take an external hard drive and format it with the exFAT file system and it will then be readable and writable to both you_r Windows PC and your Ma_c.