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&gt;&gt; &nbsp;Is there any way to format a hard drive to support the OS of both?<br />
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FAT32 format. &nbsp;Files can't exceed 4 Gb in size. &nbsp;Do this on the Windows machine. &nbsp;exFAT is also possible but not supported on older machines. &nbsp;Does support files larger than 4 Gb.<br />
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As for the external hard drive probably any that supports USB2 but wait for other experts to comment.
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If you back up files from a PC running windows, does it automatically use NTFS?
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No. The format is determined by how the drive was formatted in the first place, not by the backup software.
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Thank you for that additional link, very helpful.
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I am looking to purchase an external hard drive to back up photos, music, and documents. I have a Mac Desktop and a PC laptop. Is there any way to format a hard drive to support the OS of both? Is there a brand out there that you would recommend?
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I am looking to purchase an external hard drive to back up photos, music, and documents. I have a Mac Desktop and a PC laptop. Is there any way to format a hard drive to support the OS of both? Is there a brand out there that you would recommend?

External Hard Drive for Mac and PC

Storage devices include any device used for storing and retrieving digital information. Hard disk drives (HDDs) use one or more rigid ("hard") rapidly rotating disks (platters) coated with magnetic material. Data is accessed in a random-access manner, meaning that individual blocks of data can be stored or retrieved in any order and not only sequentially. The primary competing technology for secondary storage is flash memory in the form of solid-state drives (SSDs), but HDDs remain the dominant medium for secondary storage due to advantages in price per bit and per-device recording capacity. CD-RW (Compact Disc-ReWritable) is a digital optical disc storage format that allows information to be stored outside the mechanical HDD.

Storage Hardware

Mac OS X is the desktop operating system from Apple Inc., found on Macintosh computers. OS X consists of a Mach/BSD-based kernel, operating system interfaces primarily based on FreeBSD and additional frameworks (written in C, C++ and Objective-C providing user interface and application-level services.

Mac OS X

Hardware includes cell phones and other digital living devices, tablets, computers, servers, peripherals and components, printers and scanners, gaming consoles, networking hardware such as routers, hubs, switches and modems, storage devices and security equipment such as firewalls and other appliances.

Hardware

This topic area includes legacy versions of Windows prior to Windows 2000: Windows 3/3.1, Windows 95 and Windows 98, plus any other Windows-related versions including Windows Mobile.