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Posted on Oct 02, 2010
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How do i make my hard drive be recognizable by both MAC and Windows? I have a seagate 500gb external hard drive and I had to reformat it in my HP laptop. After doing so, whenever i use a mac, my hard drive cant be recognized by it. And so i tried reformatting it again this time, using a mac. But it was windows, who couldnt recognize it this time. Finally, i made a partition thats recognizable by both mac and windows. But it is too much of a hassle. whenever i wanna access the files that were saved from a mac in my windows, it is IMPOSSIBLE TO DO SO. HELP. I JUST WANT A DECENTLY WORKING HARD DRIVE. How do i make my files accessible to both mac and windows? Thanks

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  • Seagate Master 32,281 Answers
  • Posted on Oct 02, 2010
Anonymous
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Joined: Jun 29, 2007
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For the MAC to see a PC formatted hard drive, format the hard drive using the PC but format the hard drive in FAT32 not NTFS.
You will then able to transfer files between the PC and the MAC.
The MAC will copy file to the hard drive in PC file format.

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Related Questions:

1helpful
2answers

Can a Seagate External Hard Drive be reformatted?

Yes you can.
Insert the external hard drive into the USB port click on My Computer then right click on the external hard drive and select Format.
0helpful
1answer

I USED MY FREE AGENT DESK EXTERNAL DRIVE 500GB ON MY MAC GOT A NEW DELL AND CONNECTED THE DRIVE...IT SHOWS UP BUT I CANNOT OPEN IT PLEASE HELP

if you still can see files on the Hard disk from MAC, then the reason of being unabe to explore your file from MS windows is that your hard was initialized by MAC with a format that windows cannot read.
move your data from external hard disk to your MAC then format your hard disk from windows OS with FAT32 format .this format is readable on both MAC and WINDOWS
0helpful
2answers

Is this compatable with our Mac?

According to this page:

http://www.amazon.com/Maxtor-OneTouch-Desktop-External-STM305004OTA3E1-RK/dp/B000V4PZFU

Yes. You might need to re-format it.
0helpful
1answer

I have purchased a Seagate free agent Goflex 500gb I want to run it with my Mac Pro note book it dose not work

For a MAC to use an external Hard drive, the hard drive has to be formatted FAT32 file system. That is the only file system MAC sees.
0helpful
1answer

How do I install my seagate freeagent external harddrive into my macbook? my computer keeps asking whether I want to erase everything on the hard drive first. I'm afraid it will erase any software that...

the soft ware that comes with it will also be erased, as it is a windows based identification,seagate free agent has mac utilities on its site, try to find out on www.seagate.com. you will find one for mac format and mac installation .
1helpful
1answer

Trying to format for MAC

I had a similar issue and was able to work around it by partitioning the drive. See this site for information: http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/partitioning_tiger.html

Overview: Open Disk Utility, Click on the Drive, Click Partition, Choose the number of partitions, and click Apply.

(It's written for video editors, but is applicable in your situation)

Let me know if this helps!
0helpful
1answer

Formatting my Freeagent 1tb external hard drive for my Mac?

the problem is that your western digital operates using the NTFS (New Technology File System) which is the standard file system of Windows. Apple macs is not interopable with native NTFS therefore you need to install a read-write NTFS file-system driver on your mac.

an excellent free mac NTFS driver can be found here-
http://mac.softpedia.com/get/System-Utilities/NTFS-3G.shtml

download and install the software then restart your mac.

//javaftper
0helpful
1answer

Seagate for Mac

yes you have to mac format it, this deletes all your files. use the disk utility in the utility folder an erase with mac extended
0helpful
1answer
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