To use the same external hard drive on a Windows and a macOS computer, you need to choose the right file system. Here’s which one
If you love to take your favorite music or the photos and videos you’re most fond of with you, but prefer not to leave these files on your smartphone’s internal memory so as not to take up valuable space, you most likely use at least one USB flash drive. The same goes if you’re in the habit of taking your work (and files) home. If you carry a lot of files, music, videos, and photos with you, then you probably need an external hard drive.
But what if you have a PC at home and a Mac at work (or vice versa)? And if you need to share your photos, videos or files with someone using MacOS while you have Windows (or, again, vice versa) how do you use the same external hard drive or USB stick? As you know (or as you may have noticed), in fact, a hard disk or a flash drive used with Windows is not recognized or read by the Mac (and vice versa). Fortunately, this problem is not as serious as it seems: using an external hard drive on Windows and macOS is easier than you think.
File System
One of the many incompatibilities between Mac and Windows comes from the different file systems used: APFS or HFS Plus on Mac, FAT32, ExFAT or NTFS on Windows. If we are talking about recent computers, it is almost certain that the systems used are APFS and NTFS. A disk formatted with APFS can neither be read nor written by Windows while an NTFS disk can neither be read nor written by a Mac. The older FAT32 file system and the newer ExFAT file system (which is an extended version: Extended FAT) can be read and written by both operating systems, so if the same external hard drive or USB stick (but also an SD Card) is to be used on both Windows and Mac a first solution is to choose one of these two file systems to format it.
Which to choose between FAT32 and ExFAT
However, these two standards have technical limitations to be taken into account. With FAT32, the maximum size of a file can’t exceed 4 GB, you can’t create partitions larger than 32 GB and each folder can contain a maximum of one thousand files. ExFAT does not have these limitations, but compared to NTFS or APFS it lacks some useful features to strengthen data security such as “journaling”, a system that keeps track of changes made to individual files. To exchange files between Mac and PC via a USB stick, or an SD Card, therefore, FAT32 may be a good choice only if you do not exceed its technical limitations. Otherwise, the best choice is to format the media with ExFAT. To exchange data with an external HD, on the other hand, almost always the best choice is to format it with ExFAT.
How to create hard drives for use with Windows and Mac
Whatever your choice, both Windows and MacOS have built-in tools to format your hard drive, flash drive or memory card correctly and with the file system of your choice. In the case of Windows we are talking about the “Disk Management” tool, while on macOS it is called “Disk Utility”. In both cases, however, always remember that formatting the disk involves the permanent deletion of all the data it contains and therefore should be done before transferring files, photos and videos to the disk itself and not after.