Can I swap my Personal Storage Device between a Mac and PC?

Document Details

Article ID
T4303-1430

Last Review
July 23, 2007

Products
Warp Drive 3.5"
Warp Drive 2.5"

Firmware Versions
NA

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Sharing an external hard drive between Windows and Macintosh systems has been an issue that has caused much difficulty in the past. End-Users that delve into both the Windows and Macintosh system see this problem on a daily basis; they cannot share files between their Windows PCs and Mac Computers.

The problem stems from the fact that the file systems used by Windows Based PCs (FAT, FAT32, NTFS) differ from those used by Macintosh Computers (Mac OS Extended, HFS+). These differences make it a difficult task to share files between Mac and PC users.

 

 

Click here for ways to use Windows formatted external drives with Mac Systems. It is worth mentioning that Mac OS X (Panther 10.3.x) can now read NTFS Volumes; this means that you can copy files from an external drive (formatted with NTFS) to a Mac running Panther. However, you cannot write files from the Mac to the NTFS Volume.

The following 3rd party software products available that allow external disk drives formatted in the Macintosh file system (Mac OS Extended, HFS+) to be used on Windows systems.

MacDrive from MediaFour

MacOpener from DataViz

NOTE about 3rd Party Software:
Fitness for use in your specific application and support of these products are the SOLE responsibility of their respective publishers.