Can a hard drive be used in Windows and Mac

Asked By alivia 0 points N/A Posted on - 11/01/2011

 

Greetings!

 Will you please help me? My external hard drive already used windows, can I use the same on Mac and save files for both?

I need clarification…

And thank you in advance…

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Answered By jamesmark 0 points N/A #99965

Can a hard drive be used in Windows and Mac

Greetings…

Hello Alivia. I have some solution and i hope it will help you to solve your problem. As i read your question regarding your external hard drive that already in used in windows and you are asking if you can use in both and save  file.

I will tell you the truth yes you can use it with both operating systems but take note it must be formatted in FAT32 not NTFS because Macs can read NTFS but you cant write on it and also you must consider the limitations of FAT32.  

You can also check to this site about your problem Credited to Snow Leopard. Here is the link:         

I hope it will answer your question and help you to solve your problem.

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Answered By lee hung 75 points N/A #99966

Can a hard drive be used in Windows and Mac

Hello Alivia,

For sure you can. You will just need to install mac on the same partition as windows and each time you boot the computer you will have to choose either to boot using mac or windows, which is called a dual boot.

Just use the following simple procedure:

• Insert your mac installation CD in the computer CD drive, and then restart it.
• Choose to boot from the CD when the computer asks you so.
• At the place where you will be required to allocate partition for the mac OS, just place it on the same partition as windows and proceed with the installation.
• Just continue with the other installation steps as usual until the process finishes.
• Restart the computer, then choose to boot from whichever OS between mac and windows.

Hope this helps.

Regards
Lee Hung

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Answered By Sharath Reddy 590495 points N/A #316613

Can a hard drive be used in Windows and Mac

With Mac, whatever hard drive works on a normal PC should also work with a Macintosh computer. The only problem you may encounter is with the file system because Microsoft Windows and OS X use different file systems by default. In Microsoft Windows beginning in Windows XP, the default file system is NTFS.

In OS X, it can access hard drives formatted in NTFS but it’ll only work in read-only state by default. If you need a hard drive that can be accessed by both Microsoft Windows and OS X, you need to format the hard drive with either FAT32 or exFAT file system. Microsoft Windows supports three file systems: FAT32, NTFS, and exFAT.

Of the three, FAT32 is the oldest file system available to Windows. With FAT32, you can’t have a file larger than 4 GB.

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