

- #PARTITION A EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE FOR MAC AND WINDOWS MAC OS#
- #PARTITION A EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE FOR MAC AND WINDOWS WINDOWS#
One is FAT32, natively supported by all versions of Mac OS and Windows. To be honest, fortunately, there are indeed such ones.
#PARTITION A EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE FOR MAC AND WINDOWS WINDOWS#
When it comes to backing up both Mac and Windows computer data to a single external drive, you will surely wonder if there is a file system which is supported by the both operating systems. We will tell you the exact answer and ways. For instance, you get a new external hard drive and would like to back up both Mac and Windows systems to it. Hence, many users are plagued by the drive compatibility issue in Mac and Windows. Yet, Windows is totally incapable of no matter reading or writing data on HFS drive. Mac is able to read the NTFS drive data, but unable to write to it. This post will look at this question to expose the answer.Īs we all know, the native file system in Mac OS is Hierarchical File System (HFS), and in Windows, it is NTFS.

Therefore, many users wonder whether it’s possible to back up both Mac and Windows systems to the same hard drive.

…the storage device is connected to Windows PCs. However, FAT32 is a legacy file system designed for low capacity hard drives and it is not recommended for modern hard drives or operating systems. A FAT32 partition can reach up to 32GB when formatted on a Windows PC. exFAT is not a journaled file system which means it can be more susceptible to data corruption when errors occur or the drive is not disconnected properly from the computer.įAT32: compatible with Mac and Windows. Windows cannot natively read or write to HFS+ (journaled) hard drives.ĮxFAT: generally compatible with Mac and Windows. Mac OS Extended (HFS+): the native hard drive file system for Mac. Mac OS can read NTFS volumes but cannot natively write to them. NTFS: since it is the native file system for Windows, volumes created in NTFS are read and write with computers running Windows.
