I get this question a lot – I have an external hard drive that is NTFS formatted (Windows format), and I want to reformat it for my Mac (HFS). Two file systems compatible with Mac and Windows. NTFS is the default file system for Windows operating system and HFS for Mac operating system. If you want to make your drive compatible with Mac and Windows, you need to format it with a common file system for Mac and Windows.
Presentation MacDisk is an utility for reading, writing and formatting Apple Macintosh magnetic media on an IBM compatible PC, without any hardware modification of the computer and without any add-on. MacDisk is a 32-bit application and runs under all recent versions of Windows (Vista and 7/8 included, even 64 bits). Supported Media.
HD (High Density) floppy disks (1.44 MB),. Plain hard disks without any capacity limit (see also our page on and on ). Caution, Thunderbolt disks are not supported yet. CD-ROMs, pure, hybrid (HFS/ISO 9660) and even CD-ROMs with Apple extensions.
DVD-ROMs, which are in fact just huge CD-ROMs. Iomega cartridges, 100 and 250 MB. Iomega Jaz removable disks, 1 and 2 GB. External hard disks connected on the USB or FireWire (IEEE 1394) bus. SyQuest cartridges, all capacities. Bernoulli disks, all capacities. USB media (keys, drives, token).
Magneto-optical cartridges of 128 and 230 MB (3.5') and of 300, 350, 600, 650 MB (5.25'). Macintosh CD-ROMs are managed as read-only volumes. If you want to create Macintosh CD-ROMs or DVD-ROMs on your PC, please check. All kinds of cartridges are supported (be it on SCSI bus, on USB bus, on IDE/ATAPI bus or on the parallel port). Under Windows 2000 and higher, we don't use the Aspi layer any more, but a service launched under the local system. See the and the.
File System Compatibility MacDisk manage the old HFS volumes (classical magnetic Macintosh media)and the recent HFS+ format (also called Extended Mac OS, journalled or not). MacDisk, when launched from a Windows partition created by the boot manager Bootcamp on a Macintosh with Intel processor, can access the Macintosh partition to copy files back and forth. MacDisk is aimed at all users needing to exchange data files between the Macintosh and the PC. MacDisk is an indispensable tool for data exchanges between sibling applications that exist in both Macintosh and PC (Windows) versions, like MS-Word, MS-Excel, PageMaker, Quark Xpress as well as transfering compatible data formats (Ascii, graphical files). To get a better understanding of MacDisk features, you can download the. MacDisk Version 8.0 MacDisk is a 32-bit program. The latest version for Windows 2000 and higher adds many new functions: it now supports all CD-ROM drives (SCSI, USB, IDE/ATAPI), all kinds of CD-ROMs (HFS, HFS+, hybrid, even multi-session ones).
The 32-bit version is much faster than former ones. For an example, a 80-MB file is copied from the CD-ROM drive to the hard disk in less than a minute! More, the new interface offers an Explorer bar to navigate the Macintosh volume and a listview which allows to sort the items according to the name, to the type, to the data or resource length, to the creation/modification date and to the signature. This feature is very interesting, for an example if you get an USB token with both Word and Excel files. A sort according to the signature will allow you to copy selectively the Word files in a specific subfolder and the Excel files in another one. Likewise, if you do DTP, you'll be able to copy selectively the Tiff pictures, the EPS files and the layouts.
See our on its new features and its new user interface (with numerous screen captures). And What About DD Floppy Disks? MacDisk cannot read Apple Macintosh DD (400 KB or 800 KB) floppy disks. Apple chose to implement the GCR coding (Group Coded Recording) with a variable spindle speed to squeeze more data on the outer tracks of the medium.
There are no software solutions to mimic that on the PC, and the existing hardware solutions become more and more of 'historical nature' (Central Point Option Board DeLuxe, Apple external floppy drive connected to a MicroSolution controller). However, I recently learned that one of those cards is still available: the can read DD images with a normal PC-floppy (connected to it) as well as many other formats. For the time being, the only practical solutions is to find a working Macintosh with a floppy drive to copy the files onto another floppy (HD) or another medium.
MacDisk Features MacDisk manages the and adds a corresponding extension to the files copied from the Mac to the PC. Conversely, MacDisk gives a signature to the files copied on the Macintosh volume to make 'double-clickable' icons.
The lookup table is freely editable (with the utility). MacDisk is a low-level disk utility and not a conversion program. It doesn't modify the contents of the files (to avoid yet another source of problems). It is bundled with, a little text converter aimed at some Macintosh text formats.
Cross-Platform Compatibility Most big applications existing on both platforms open the files created on the other platform. That is, Word for Windows opens Word Mac files. This holds true also for Excel, PageMaker, Xpress and many others.
See our for more information about converting and transferring data files between Macintosh and PC. Font Transfers From version 4.5, MacDisk offers certain features to transfer and convert between the Macintosh and the PC. How to Buy MacDisk?
Please see our and our. The on-line order processing is done on a secure server (SSL) and offers all the security you want and need (in particular, your credit card information never travels on unsecured links).
As soon as your credit card is charged, you are redirected to the downloading page, where you can download the full version of the program. A confirmation message is also sent by email with a downloading link. If you encounter problems, don't hesitate to write us, we'll answer as soon as possible to help you. To Go Further.
to check yourself what the program may do for you. (a few sentences may say it better than thousand words.
Updates and Upgrades If you're a registered user of one of our products (including our discontinued products, or ), see our. We also offer a competitive upgrade for users of similar products.
I get this question a lot – I have an external hard drive that is NTFS formatted (Windows format), and I want to reformat it for my Mac (HFS). How do I do that? And you know what? It’s not nearly as easy as it should be! There is one trick to it that is not intuitive. So how DO you do it? First Plug the drive in to your Mac.
Then open the Disk Utility that is located in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder. You will see your internal drive in your Mac, as well as any other storage devices that are connected. For this exercise, it is best to DISCONNECT any and all external storage devices, so you only have the one that you wish to format connected. That way you will protect yourself from inadvertently re-formatting the wrong drive. You must still be careful in your selection of which drive to format, as you certainly don’t want to format one of your internal drives. When you see the drives listed down the right hand side of the Disk Utilities window, you will see at least two entries for each physical hard drive. The first is the physical drive itself.
What appear underneath the physical drive are the individual partitions. Most drives are formatted into a single partition, so you will normally see only one entry underneath a physical drive entry. But that is not always the case, so don’t be surprised, or think there is something wrong, if you see more than one entry under a physical drive.
For the purpose of reformatting, you need to start by selecting the PHYSICAL drive that you wish to reformat. In my example here (shown in the pictures here), I will be reformatting the drive shown as ‘298.1 GB Seagate FreAge.’. You can see at the bottom of the first image that this drive is formatted as Windows NT File System (NTFS).
We want it to be Mac HFS formatted. Once you have selected the PHYSICAL drive, then click on the Partition tab at the top of the window.
![Disc Disc](http://cdn.osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/format-drive-mac-windows-compatible.jpg)
You will then need to click on the down arrow under the heading ‘Volume Scheme’ to indicate how many partitions you wish this newly formatted drive to have. Again, the standard is one, and that is what is shown here in the images. On a Mac, they system will automatically try to format any partition to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). You will see this indicated on the right hand side of the image, labeled ‘Format’. This can be changed if desired, but for this exercise this is exactly the format we want. Now for the tricky part. When you start with a drive that has been formatted for a Windows system, there is another part that must be changed, and that can be found by clicking on the Options button located underneath the Partitions window.
(Each partition can be named separately). When you click on that Options button, you will see the screen shown here. Notice that this screen defaults to Master Boot Record – this is the existing Windows NTFS format that is on the drive. And this must be changed in order to successfully format this drive for a Mac.
There are two other options here – GUID Partition Table and Apple Partition Table. There are good descriptions here of which to use for what specific Mac product you wish to optimize this drive for.
For most new formats, you will want to choose the top selection – GUID Partition Table. Once you select this, click the OK button, and you are now ready to actually partition and format your drive. After you hit Apply on the Partition Scheme window, you are returned to the prior window showing your devices. You might now want to change the name of the partition that you are about to create.
Under the heading ‘Volume Information’ in the upper right, simply type in the name you would like to use in the Name field (it defaults to ‘Untitled-1’). There are some rules about naming, and the system will inform you as you enter the name. From here, click on Apply and the system will partition and format your drive for use with your Mac.
When you hit the Apply button, there will be one more screen for you to confirm that you indeed want to partition and format this drive, as it will remove any and all data that is on that drive. Please be sure you are formatting the right drive! That’s really all there is to it. That one trick – the Options screen – is what usually catches people up when trying to change a drive from a Windows format to a Mac format. Happy formatting! Ian, Great question.
Yes, you could indeed partition your new FreeAgent Go to have both an NTFS partition AND an HRS partition. This is not a typical solution, but it can be done. I would recommend you create the partitions on the Mac, and set the one that you will eventually want as NTFS as FAT (so you can then reformat that on your PC). Please be aware though – your PC will never be able to see the HFS partition. The Mac will be able to see and read from the NTFS partition, but not write to it. I hope this helps! Hi there, I have and had Windows based PCs and laptops since.
Now I just had enough and wish to change to Mac. I wish it would be as easy to just buy a new machine and done but I want my TB worth of photos and other file to be transfered safely. I have purchased a Freagent Go USB 2.0 and been told that Mac will see this even though its been formated to NTFS. I had my doubts but anyway I have it now and wish to transfer data. Obviously the above mentioned re-formating won’t help as it would erase all my datad from the drive, but can any1 tell me, what would be the best solution, without writing 100s of DVDs or aven Blu-Rays if that would be an option at all.
Hi Jon, I recently bought a 320GB Seagate free agent, which I bought specifically to work on my PC laptop and Mac. The sales assistant assured me that it worked for both! While at uni I use a Mac and it crashed!making all my files read only.
A friend re formatted on his Mac book pro, (big mistake) as I am now missing the NTFS formatting which I’m guessing I need to work on my PC laptop. I read that if I use over 4GB on the free agent using a Mac that it’s likly to crash!so now I can use if for my mac, but can’t sync files from my PC laptop. Can you help me show the reverse of this article, (need a NTFS partition)?
Thank you: ). I’ll add my voice to the chorus of thanks! I bought one drive, tried to format/erase/initialize or just use the thing, and managed to mess up the directory (I think) to the point where it wouldn’t show up on a Windows computer either. I took it back to the store (hey, Fry’s – that drive might be OK after all) and got another one – since it behaved the same as the first, I made sure not to do anything to it until I tried your method. It’s now formatted, and happily swallowing all the backup data I’m dumping on it!
Thanks again! On the back of the Seagate Expansion you will find a power input and a USB 3.0 jack. Using this hard drive is very simple on Windows operating systems – You merely plug in the power cord and USB 3.0 lead and off you go, this is thanks to the fact that the hard drive comes pre-setup to use for Windows users. If you want to use the Seagate Expansion on a mac, you only need to reformat it using the Disk Utility in your Mac operating system and voila. If you don’t know how to do this, take a look at the following Seagate page and follow their easy to follow steps:.