Forums
New posts
Articles
Product Reviews
Policies
FAQ
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
New posts
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Forums
Apple Computing Products:
macOS - Desktop Hardware
The External hard-drive question for newbs
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="baggss" data-source="post: 1026296" data-attributes="member: 6762"><p>Most people use externals drives for data storage and keep the apps on the internal drive. To use you external drive on your Mac you have 3 options:</p><p></p><p> 1) Use the Mac's built in Disc utility to format the drive as HFS+ (Journaled). This is the standard Mac format.The drive will no longer be accessable to your Windows based </p><p> computers without 3rd party apps to allow it to do so.</p><p></p><p> 2) FAT-32. Your Mac can format the drive as FAT 32 (Windows DOS format) and it can do it to large drives (Windows limits FAT 32 pto 32Gb partitions only). FAT-32 allows </p><p> you to share the driver between your Mac and PC easily but be aware that FAT-32 can not handle files larger than 4Gb in size.</p><p></p><p> 3) NTFS. This is the standard Windows format. Your Mac can read NTFS but can't write to an NTFS drive (Blame MS not Apple). You buy software such as MacFuse or others </p><p> that will allow your Mac to work seemlessly with NTFS drives, but they are not free.</p><p></p><p>In the end you have to decide what you want to do with the drive and how you want to use it. You don't have to have the MacOS installed on your external, it just has to be in a format the Mac can use.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="baggss, post: 1026296, member: 6762"] Most people use externals drives for data storage and keep the apps on the internal drive. To use you external drive on your Mac you have 3 options: 1) Use the Mac's built in Disc utility to format the drive as HFS+ (Journaled). This is the standard Mac format.The drive will no longer be accessable to your Windows based computers without 3rd party apps to allow it to do so. 2) FAT-32. Your Mac can format the drive as FAT 32 (Windows DOS format) and it can do it to large drives (Windows limits FAT 32 pto 32Gb partitions only). FAT-32 allows you to share the driver between your Mac and PC easily but be aware that FAT-32 can not handle files larger than 4Gb in size. 3) NTFS. This is the standard Windows format. Your Mac can read NTFS but can't write to an NTFS drive (Blame MS not Apple). You buy software such as MacFuse or others that will allow your Mac to work seemlessly with NTFS drives, but they are not free. In the end you have to decide what you want to do with the drive and how you want to use it. You don't have to have the MacOS installed on your external, it just has to be in a format the Mac can use. [/QUOTE]
Verification
Post reply
Forums
Apple Computing Products:
macOS - Desktop Hardware
The External hard-drive question for newbs
Top