External Drive for Windows and Mac

[ronbo613]

I have a USB 2.0 external hard drive that I would like to send to a friend with a MacBook Pro running OSX 10.11.6. I have a Windows 7 computer. Is it possible to format and put data on the drive with the Win7 computer so it will work with the MacBook Pro? Does the MacBook even have a USB port? I read you can format the drive with FAT32 and it will work with both. That would be fine because I can work with the file size limit. Any way to do this?

 

[EXCellR8]

Windows can't format the drive for Mac, but Linux and GParted are your friend...

The drive itself should work fine on any computer with USB 2.0

 

[Elixer]

I have a USB 2.0 external hard drive that I would like to send to a friend with a MacBook Pro running OSX 10.11.6. I have a Windows 7 computer. Is it possible to format and put data on the drive with the Win7 computer so it will work with the MacBook Pro? Does the MacBook even have a USB port? I read you can format the drive with FAT32 and it will work with both. That would be fine because I can work with the file size limit. Any way to do this?

Yeah, just format the drive with FAT32, and you are good to go.
Depending on how big it is, you might have to make more than 1 partition, but, that isn't really a issue either.

 

[ronbo613]

Yeah, just format the drive with FAT32, and you are good to go.
Depending on how big it is, you might have to make more than 1 partition, but, that isn't really a issue either.

Been a long time since I had to do the Apple-Windows file transfer dance. I'll format a drive with FAT32 and try it out on my neighbor's Mac.

 

[Elixer]

You can also use USB flash drives formatted to FAT32, those work as well.