Single ext HDD formatted for Mac and PC?

[Dan Turner]

Hi, I've bought an portable hard disk to back up my Mac and store remotely, however it would be very useful if I could also use it to back up my parent's PC. Does anyone know if there is a way for formatting it so that it is compatible with both a Mac and PC?

Cheers.

 

[professorhat]

Yup, format it on the Mac and choose the MS-DOS (FAT) option on the Volume Format (within the Disk Utility app). This will format as FAT32 and allow you to see it on both the Mac and PC.

 

[Dan Turner]

professorhat:
Yup, format it on the Mac and choose the MS-DOS (FAT) option on the Volume Format (within the Disk Utility app). This will format as FAT32 and allow you to see it on both the Mac and PC.

Cheers Professor!

 

[Anonymous]

If ur mac is running OS X 10.6.5 or higher, and ur PC is running XP SP2/Vista SP1 or higher or Win7- then a better option would be exFAT as it doesnt have the 4GB filesize limit.

 

[Dan Turner]

Thanks for the tip edsib1. I ran into the 4GB limitation and ended up formatting the drive with 2 partitions, 1 in Mac OS extended format and one in FAT 32 for when I back up my parents PC.

 

[Anonymous]

Stoopid computers why ain't they all the same!

Son, once upon a time there were two irresponsible ogres with conflicting paradigms which caused mayhem in the first few decades of computing. When they died...