1. Jan 17, 2019  So above discussion was all about How to Partition an External Hard Disk in Windows 10, Use the guide and you can easily create multiple drives in your external hard disk and use them to store files separately on that drive.Hope you like the handbook, do share it with others too. Leave a comment below if you have any related queries with this.
2. Both these methods work great to partition hard drive on Mac. Disk Utility: The Disk Utility is used when you wish to partition Mac and wants to install a different version of the same OS. As we all know, Disk Utility can perform various tasks on Mac including repair and partition. The Mac partition Manager is used for this process.
3. Your exFAT-formatted drive or partition can now be used for both Windows and Mac. Note that using a drive frequently between Windows and Mac could increase the chances of file corruption, so make.
4. Step 1, Open Start. Click the Windows logo in the bottom-left corner of the screen. You can also press the ⊞ Win key on your computer's keyboard.Step 2, Type computer management into Start. This will search your computer for the Computer Management program.Step 3, Click Computer Management. It's at the top of the Start window. Doing so opens Computer Management. You may not be able to access this program if you're not using an administrator account.
5. How to erase a partition on your Mac. Make sure to restart your computer in your main partition to erase additional ones. Open Finder from your dock. Select Applications. Scroll down and open the Utilities folder. Double-click to open Disk Utility. Select the partition you wish to erase.

1. Partition A Hard Drive-in Xp
2. Partition A Hard Drive Vista
3. How To Partition A Hard Drive For Both Mac And Pc
4. How To Partition External Hard Drive For Mac And Pc

How to partition hard drives on Mac. As seen on Windows, macOS also integrates a utility that allows hard disk partition and other units in a very simple way. The instrument included as standard by Apple can be found in the Other folder of the Launchpad.

Summary :

Want to format an external hard drive for Mac and Windows PC? Do you know how to do this work easily? This post will show you specific methods to make external hard drive compatible with Mac and PC, which are easy and safe to complete.

As we know, external hard drives are widely used to backup data or interchange files among different computers. Well, is there an external hard drive that could be shared between Mac and Windows PC? Of course, there is. Actually, most external hard disks could be compatible with Mac and PC as long as you format them correctly.

Why Need to Format External Hard Drive for Mac and PC

To put it simply, if you want to share external hard drive between Mac and PC, you need to format an external hard drive for Mac and PC.

Currently, hard drives for Windows PC are always formatted with NTFS, while hard disks for Mac are formatted with HFS+. However, when we connect a NTFS formatted disk to Mac, Mac OS X doesn't allow us to write files to the drive neither edit files, though it can read a NTFS drive. Similarly, Windows OS will ask us to format the HFS+ formatted drive when we connecting such a disk, let along edit files saved on HFS+ formatted hard disks unless we resort to third party programs.

But luckily, there are file systems well supported by both Mac and Windows PC, and they are FAT32 (it might be called MS-DOS on Mac) and exFAT. As long as we format the external hard drive to one of these 2 file systems, it can be shared between Mac and Windows.

Further Reading

Both FAT32 and exFAT have advantages and disadvantages.

FAT32: FAT32 works with all versions of Windows, Mac OS, Linux, game consoles, etc.

However, single files on a FAT32 drive can't be larger than 4GB. If your external drive saves files larger than 4GB or you plan to save larger files to this drive, converting to FAT32 is not recommended.

In addition, a FAT32 partition must be not more than 32GB if you create it in Windows Disk Management. Of course, there is free partition manager that can help create a FAT32 volume up to 2TB, which also functions correctly.

exFAT: exFAT has very large file size and partition size limits, which means it's a good idea to format your external hard drive to exFAT.

Nevertheless, a lot of users complained that exFAT is slow, and they highly suggest using FAT32 if you can avoid file size constraints.

Three Options for Accessing NTFS Drives on Mac

Paid Third-Party Drivers

Some paid third-party NTFS drivers for Mac can be used to access NTFS drives on Mac. They work well and they have better performance than the free solutions which will be mentioned in the following part. Paragon NTFS for Mac is such a driver.

Besides, you can also use the paid third-party file system converters to convert NTFS to FAT32 or exFAT which are compatible with both Mac and PC. MiniTool Partition Wizard is one representative.

Free Third-Party Drivers

FUSE for macOS is a free and open-source NTFS driver that can enable write support. But, this solution is slower relatively. And the automatically mounting NTFS partitions in read-write mode can be a security risk for your Mac computer.

Apple’s Experimental NTFS-Write Support

The Mac OS has an experimental support for writing to NTFS drives. Usually, it is disabled by default and needs some messing around in the Mac terminal to enable it.

It doesn’t work properly all the time and could lead to potential issues with your NTFS file system. For example, it had corrupted data before. Thus, we don’t suggest using this tool and we believe it is disabled by this reason.

Here, we recommend using the paid third-party tools since they are easy-to-use and can do good work for you.

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Then, we will introduce these three options for you in the following content.

The Best Paid Third-Party Driver: Paragon NTFS for Mac

Paragon NTFS for Mac can write, edit, delete, copy, or move files on NTFS volumes from your Mac computer. It offers a 10-day free trial. If you want to use it all the time, you need to pay for it.

With it, you don’t have to fiddle with terminal commands to mount partitions manually. Additionally, it can mount partitions automatically and safely. More importantly, it can code with the potential corruption. If you purchase a Seagate drive, you can even get a free download of Paragon NTFS for Mac.

All in all, it does its works well and gives you good user’s experience.

The Best Free Third-Party Drivers: FUSE for macOS

FUSE for macOS is a free solution to access NTFS on Mac. But it is less secure.

If you want to make automatically mount NTFS partitions in read-write mode on Mac, you need to temporarily disable the System Integrity Protection and replace one of Apple’s built-in tools with a binary that is more vulnerable to attack. Thus, your Mac is in danger when using this driver.

However, you can use it to manually mount NTFS partitions in read-write mode if you never mind using the Terminal. This will be safer, but you need to do more work. You can go to google the steps and see how complex they are.

Apple’s Experimental NTFS-Writing Support: Don’t Do This, Seriously

Although we mentioned this method in our article, we still don’t recommend it because it is the least tested. It is just for educational purposes, and it is available on Mac OS 10.12 Sierra. Perhaps, it will be unstable forever.

How to Quickly Format External Hard Drive for Mac and PC without Losing Data

Another way to access NTFS drive on Mac is to convert the NTFS/HFS+ to FAT/exFAT. Then, the drive can be used on both Mac and PC.

There should be some important data on the drive. To keep it safe, you can choose this best NTFS/HFS+ to FAT/exFAT converter: MiniTool Partition Wizard.

How to Convert NTFS to FAT32 or exFAT Without Data Loss

To format hard drive for Mac and Windows without data loss, we suggest using MiniTool Partition Wizard and its 'Convert NTFS to FATS32' function. If you are a personal user, you can try its Professional Edition.

Step 1: Run MiniTool Partition Wizard

Netcut for mac. Download this software to your computer. Then, you can open the software and input the license key to the pop-out window to get its Professional Edition.

Step 2: Convert NTFS to FAT32 with This Software

After running the program successfully, we can see its main interface as follows:

Here, please select the NTFS partition of external hard drive and choose 'Convert NTFS to FAT' feature from the left action pane. If there is more than one NTFS partition, convert all of them one by one.

At last, click 'Apply' button to make the change executed.

When MiniTool Partition Wizard shows it applies the change successfully, the original NTFS will finally become a FAT32 partition.

By this way, you can easily format an external hard drive for Mac and PC without losing any data. Then, you can share external hard drive between Mac and PC

You Can Convert NTFS to exFAT in 3 Steps

However, if you want to convert NTFS to exFAT to make external hard drive compatible with Mac and PC, 3 steps are required.

Step 1: Transfer Data out from External Hard Drive

You can choose to copy and paste those files to other external devices or internal hard disk of Windows, but it will cost much time. Instead, you can use MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition to create a copy for your external drive, which is faster.

If there is only one NTFS partition on external hard drive, refer to the tutorial Copy Partition to get instructions. However, if there is more than one NTFS partition, view Copy Disk to get specific operations.

Step 2: Create exFAT Partition with MiniTool Partition Wizard

The Free Edition of this software also enables you to do this job.

Firstly, you need to delete the partition by using this software. Just open the software to enter its main interface. Then, choose the target partition and click 'Delete Partition' from the left action pane. After that, you should click 'Apply' to keep this change.

Secondly, the target partition will become unallocated. Here, you need to choose that partition and click on 'Create Partition' from the left action pane.

Thirdly, you will see a pop-out window. Here, you can choose 'exFAT' from the 'File System' setting option. At the same time, you can also set some other parameters for this partition, including 'Partition Label', 'Drive Letter', 'Size And Location'. After that, please click on 'OK'.

Fourthly, you will go back to the main interface. Then, please click on 'Apply' to save these changes.

Finally, an exFAT partition will be created on your external hard disk so that it could be shared between Mac and Windows PC

Step 3: Transfer Data back to External Drive

If you want to share files that you have backed up between Mac and PC, now please transfer these files back to external hard drive.

How to Convert HFS+ to FAT32 or exFAT without Losing Data

Besides, you can format an external hard drive for Mac and Windows by converting HFS+ to FAT32 or exFAT without losing any data.

Step 1: Backup Data in HFS+ Partition on Mac

Just transfer all useful files out from the external hard drive to other devices on Mac. Of course, if you have a backup already, ignore this step.

Step 2: Create a FAT32 or exFAT Partition on Windows PC

Some people may ask why create such partitions on Windows rather than Mac. That is because there are cases reporting FAT32 (MS-DOS) or exFAT partitions created on Mac did not work well on Windows.

Please skip to Solution 1: Format External Hard Drive to FAT32 to get steps to create a FAT32 partitions or go back to Step 2: Create exFAT Partition with MiniTool Partition Wizard to get operations to create an exFAT partition.

How to Make an Empty External Drive Compatible with Mac and PC

If there is no file saved on your external hard drive, how to make external hard drive compatible with Mac and PC?

It's very easy to share it between Mac and PC and you also need a Windows computer, a Mac machine, and the free partition manager MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition.

There are 3 solutions for this case, so please choose the one you like most to format external hard drive Windows 10/8/7.

Solution 1: Format External Hard Drive Windows 10/8/7 to FAT32

Since users are unable to create a FAT32 partition larger than 32GB in Windows Disk Management, they need to use MiniTool Partition Wizard Free.

Please download and install this program on your Windows computer to format an external hard drive for Mac and PC.

Firstly, open the software to enter its main interface as follows. Here, please select the NTFS partition or HFS+ partition of external hard drive, and click 'Delete Partition' feature from the left action pane. If there are multiple partitions on the external disk, please select the disk and click 'Delete All Partitions' feature instead. After that, an unallocated space will be released.

Secondly, you can create one or more FAT32 partitions in unallocated space. Select the unallocated space and choose 'Create Partition' feature from the left side.

Then, you should choose 'FAT32' from the 'File System' option in the pop-out window. Meanwhile, you can set properties for this new partition and click 'OK' to go back to the main window of Partition Wizard.

At last, click 'Apply' button to make all changes performed.

Solution 2: Format External Hard Drive Windows 7/8/10 to exFAT

Firstly, please delete the NTFS or HFS+ partition in either MiniTool Partition Wizard or Windows Disk Management to release unallocated space. Then, you can create an exFAT partition with MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition by following steps introduced in the section Step 2: Create exFAT Partition with MiniTool Partition Wizard.

Once a FAT32 or exFAT partition is created on your external hard drive, you can share it on both Mac and Windows PC.

Solution 3: Create One HFS+ Partition for Mac and One NTFS Partition for Windows

Alternatively, you can create 2 partitions on the external hard drive: one is for Mac, and the other is for Windows. As to size for each partition, it depends on your own demands. By this way, you can easily format an external hard drive for Mac and Windows.

Step 1: Create a NTFS Partition and a FAT32 Partition

Please run MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition, then delete all the original NTFS or HFS+ partition(s), and create a new NTFS partition as well as a FAT32 partition, and the latter will be formatted to HFS+ in Mac machine.

Then, select the external hard drive and choose 'Delete All Partitions' to create an unallocated space.

Here, select the unallocated space and choose 'Create Partition' feature from the left action pane.

Partition A Hard Drive-in Xp

Now, please specify partition label (Windows is recommended), partition type (primary or logical), drive letter, file system (NTFS), cluster size, and partition size (you can change the length of the handle to adjust partition size). Then, click 'OK' to continue.

Now, you can see a NTFS partition is created. Please use the same way to create a FAT32 partition labeled with Mac. At last, click 'Apply' button to make all changes performed.

Step 2: Format the FAT32 Partition to HFS+ Partition on Mac

Please go to Utilities → Disk Utility to get the window below:

Then, select the external hard drive and click 'Partition' tab on the top.

Now, find the FAT32 partition and format it to OS X Extended (Journaled), which is the desired HFS+. Finally, click 'Apply' button to make all changes performed.

After NTFS partition and HFS+ partition are created on your external hard drive, it can be shared between Mac and Windows PC.

Bottom Line

Are you planning to format an external hard drive for Mac and PC? If yes, now try one of our methods to make external hard drive compatible with Mac and PC.

Should you have any problem, just feel free to leave us a message in comment part below or send an email to [email protected].

Computer is the new age sensation devices with the parallel speed of a fast-paced world. In this digital era, computer peripherals devices like Motherboard, RAM, ROM, and Hard drives play their major role. The assembling of devices is easy than ever before, turning the wonders with the partition of the Hard disks too. The experts and the computer hackers are working for the easiness to Partition a Hard Drive hassle-free and more easily.

What is Hard Drive

It’s recalled as the computer input and output devices. A computer hard drive is a storage device that stores digitally encoded data in the essential premises of the computer or peripheral devices of the smart world. There are various types of drives such as SATA and IDE hard disk drives and while these devices look similar they provide different benefits. With the people getting confused in the differentiation of the hard drive, it’s better to be sure of its needs and for the all good reasons. Along the operating system, and other functional files are stored to the device to make its more operative.

What is Hard Drive Partition

When you open Windows File Explorer, you may find several volumes, like disk C, disk D, disk E, etc. These are the partitions of physical hard drive. We can imagine a hard drive as a big house, while partitions are small rooms within it. We can freely split the house into several rooms, with each of which occupying different size, so that they can serve for various purposes.

Why to Partition a Hard Disk

People are always in the hassle of the smart devices, but unaware of the proper usage. Should you partition your hard drive? For home computer users, partitioning a hard drive may be a smart option. By partitioning, critical data that a computer uses is not stored on the same drive. Why is this helpful? How about to learn the challenges of the Pre-partition?

Better Organize the Data

The best reason is this as most people are looking for these only. Partitioning a hard disk in real time will provide you with several separate logical drives. Hence, in this way, you will be able to make the partition, a smarter way.

Run Different OS on the PC/Laptops

From the booming devices of smart technology, PC and Laptops have made the world more closely. With the electronics on it cost array the operating system demands independent partition for its own. One can use different separation for the partitioning of the Hard Drive, the smart way.

Reduce the Cyber Threats

With the increased use of the devices, viruses and bugs are making a home in a computer, so it’s better to have the software and hardware control management system. In case of system attack caused by ransomware or other threats, which may require a system reinstalling and wipe primary partition, data on other partitions have a chance to survive.

Back Up the Data Effectively

Backup is required to keep the data more organized and secured in case the need of hard drive data recovery. Data-effectively storage capability is needed to keep the ample storage.

Select Appropriate Encrypt Device

Encrypting devices are needed to keep the hard drive more secure and more efficient. By partitioning a hard drive, you will be able to encrypt a partition for secure while keep using other partitions smoothly.

How to Partition a Hard Drive on Windows 10/8/7

Windows 7 and later systems have built-in partitioning tool, Disk management. In order to partition a hard drive, we need to shrink an existing partition and split out the extra space for a new partition.

• Step 1. Go to Start menu (or search box if no Start menu), then type: partitions.
• Step 2. Click Create and format hard disk partitions from the match results.
• Step 3. Check the columns at the bottom. Right-click the partition that has extra space, then choose Shrink volume…
  
• Step 4. Enter the amount of space to shrink, then click Shrink. Once it is done, a new unallocated column will appear.
• Step 5. Right-click the unallocated volume and choose New Simple Volume…
  
• Step 6. Follow the New simple volume setup wizard. The default settings are usually fine.
• Step 7. Now you should get a new partition on your hard drive.

Notes:

Partition A Hard Drive Vista

1. If there already exists Unallocated space, then you can skip Step 3 and 4.
2. If it is an initial partitioning or setup of your hard drive, you may be asked to choose a partition style for the new hard drive. Check the differences between MBR and GPT.

With the partition tool, you can easily delete a partition. However, it is not suggested since you lose important files. In case it happens by accident, please refer to how to recover files from deleted partition.

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