How to Partition and Format a WD Drive on Windows and macOS. While in there, open Utilities, and lastly double-click on Disk Utility. How to format a WD hard drive in exFAT or FAT32 for assistance formatting a drive to be used on both a Windows PC and a system running Mac OSX. Return to Top. Boot Camp Assistant guides you through installing Windows on your Mac. Open this app from the Utilities folder inside the Applications folder. Then follow the onscreen instructions to repartition your startup disk and download related software drivers for Windows.
I recently bought a Seagate for Mac 1 TB external hard drive. When I connect to my MacBook through the FireWire, it works fine, but I also have media on my Dell laptop which is running Windows Vista. When I connect the hard drive to that laptop using the USB cable, Windows doesn't recognize it. What am I doing wrong?
ExcellllOpen mac hard drive on windows pc. Ask Question. The best free tool I can find is HFSExplorer. It's commonly used for: A user of an Intel Mac running Windows with Boot Camp in need of accessing the files on the Mac OS X hard drive. Owners of HFS+-formatted iPods, that wish to access their content from within Windows or elsewhere (a user.
6 Answers
Since you have a Seagate drive you are in luck!
Seagate has free drivers available to download for:
Both are commercial products made by Paragon. See their homepages for:
I'm not affiliated with Paragon. I just bought a Seagate drive to use on a Mac I just acquired though I've always had Windows machines. I've given them both a quick test and they seem to work well, but I haven't put them to extensive use this far.
hippietrailhippietrailIf you open the Disk Utility application on your Mac with the disk connected, you should be able to see it in the list of disks on the left hand column of the Disk Utility window.
If you click on the the partition (i.e. the name you see in your file tree when the disk mounts under OS X) what do you see for the Format at the bottom of the window?
If it is Mac OS Extended or a something similar then your disk is using the HFS+ file system, which is the default for OS X. This file system type is not natively supported by Windows, which is why the disk will not mount when you plug it into your laptop.
You have a couple of options:
Reformat the disk to
FAT32, which (as suggested by Michael Sturm) is the lowest common denominator in file systems between OS X and Windows. In addition to limitation to file sizes < 4 GB, you also lose a lot of nice features onHFS+such as permissions and journalling.Create a
FAT32partition on the disk along side the existingHFS+partition. This could be used to move data between the Mac and the Windows machine, but would suffer from all the sameFAT32issues mentioned above.Look at additional software which will allow for either
NTFSorHFS+to be read on OS X and Windows respectively. On the Mac, this can be accomplished using add-ons related to the MacFuse project. You should choose the filesystem that you plan on using most frequently so that it is as fast as possible and then reformat the disk accordingly. Using additional software like this will probably create a performance hit, but how noticeable it is depends on your usage pattern.
Its is probably the format of the drive. In general, Macs will read Windows formatted drives (FAT and, I believe NTFS), but Windows doesn't recognize Mac formatted drives (HFS+).
KeithBKeithBDepends on the filesystem type and partitioning scheme whether it'll work on both. If the hard drive were formatted for HFS it would not show up on the Windows Computer. If the Partition Scheme were Apple Partition Map, it would also not show up.
For maximum compatibility, back up everything from the external hard drive onto your Mac. Open Disk Utility, select the external hard drive and go to Partition. Under Volume Scheme, choose 1 Partition, then click Options. Choose Master Boot Record. Click Ok. Then choose MSDOS under the Format menu. Then click Apply.
Your hard drive should work on either computer at that point, as well as others you may try to use it on.
This is most likely related to the File System type that the drive was formatted with:
- Windows cannot use HFS+ (the Mac file system).
- Mac can not use NTFS (as far as I know), and the lowest common denominator -
- FAT32 - is not available as an option in the Windows Format Dialog (although I think there are tools to use it as it supports 2 TB Partitions).
File Size on FAT32 is limited to 4 GB though, disqualifying it for video applications.
Michael Stum♦Michael StumIf you want something that both machines / OSes can read a write, and that can act as an emergency boot drive for either machine, do this:
- Reformat the drive, using the GUID Partition Table (GPT) as the low-level partition table format. Avoid Master Boot Record, which Intel Macs can't boot from. Also avoid Apple Partition Map, which Windows machines would have no clue about.
- Give the drive one HFS+J (Mac OS Extended, Journaled) partition large enough to install Mac OS X onto (10GB+). This volume format accommodates Mac OS X and Mac files the best.
- Give the drive one FAT32 (MS-DOS) partition, which both Mac OS X and Windows can read and write. This is a good place to put files that you want both Mac and Windows to have read/write access to. The FAT volume format is showing its age, but a huge variety of OSes know how to work with it.
- If you want the drive to have a volume that's more optimal for Windows than FAT, give it an NTFS partition as well. This would be a good volume to install Windows onto, but beware that Mac OS X only has read-only support for NTFS built-in. If you want your Mac to be able to write to this partition, you'll need third-party software to enable this on Mac OS X.