Video editors will often find that they need to share files between a PC and a Mac. Use these steps to format external hard drives for both operating systems.

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As a video editor or Digital Imaging Technician, you will often need to share files with others. Eventually you will find out that you may not be working on the same operating system (OS) as others. If you work solely on a Mac, but need to send files to someone working on a PC, your external hard drive needs to be set up for both operating systems. Let’s take a look at the different types of formats, and which are best for video production.

Formatting the Hard Drive

A vast majority of video production will be done on a Mac or Windows operating system, so we aren’t going to cover Linux. Hard drives set up for use on Windows machines only will often use NTFS, while Macs will use HFS+. That said, if you are using both a PC and Mac in the workflow, you’ll need to use a different format.

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You may be using only Macs or PCs in your own office, but you will also need to take into account what type of machines your client is using. If you need to send them RAW files or an edited sequence, you will need to make sure the external hard drive is set up for both operating systems. To do this, you will need to use either exFAT or FAT32 formats. This will allow you to use the hard drive on both a Mac and PC.

FAT32 is often used among general users, but FAT32 has limitations that can affect filmmakers. FAT32 has a maximum file size of 4 GB per file. The limitation affects both Mac and PC users. A single high resolution file can easily go over 4 GB, so Fat32 may not the best format. The best format for video production is exFAT. The maximum individual file size for exFAT is 16 EB. 1 EB, or exabyte, is 1 billion GB. That said, if you are using smaller file sizes — FAT32 can suffice.

Format Hard Drive (Mac)

1. Connect the external hard drive to the computer.

2. Click Go on the top tool bar, and select Utilities.

3. Open Disk Utility.

4. Select the external hard drive on the left-hand side.

Format Hard Drive For Pc And Mac

5. Click the Partition tab.

6. Change the Partition Layout from Current to 1 Partition.

7. Click Options, Select Master Boot Record, and click OK.

8. Name the hard drive with a name of your choice.

9. Click the Format drop-down menu.

10. Select exFat (or MS-DOS FAT for a FAT32 format).

11. Hit Apply, then click on Partition.

Formatting Hard Drive (Windows)

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1. Right-Click on the Windows icon in the lower left-hand corner.

2. Select Disk Management.

3. Right-Click on the external hard drive in the Volume tab.

4. Click Format.

5. Name the hard drive.

6. Select exFAT (or FAT for FAT32).

7. Click OK.

Naming and Labelling Hard Drives

If you will be using multiple external hard drives on a project, you’ll want to make sure to keep them organized. This includes the way you name the drive and how you label it.

One of my personal tricks is naming all drives after an actor. For instance, one project had several external drives, all of which were named after different Will Ferrell characters — Mugatu, Megamind, Lord Business, and Ron Burgundy. Another project used Tom Hanks characters — Forrest and Woody.

Remember that external drives should be used temporarily — and all footage should be backed up elsewhere. Use checksum verification to make sure everything is copied correctly.

There are plenty of ways you can label your drives. You can simply use some masking tape or gaff tape, and then write the name of the drive. You can also use hard drive labels, which are the awesome stickers featured above. You easily put them on your external drive to keep track of them.

If you are a parent, like myself, you can also use any stickers you have lying around the house. I recently had Kermit the Frog and Optimus Prime hard drives.

No matter how you label your hard drives, just make sure you keep track of them. You never know when you will need that footage from a three-year-old project.

Got any hard drive organizational tips to share with the community? Let us know in the comments below!

An external hard drive that supports both Windows and Mac operating systems can be extremely helpful to users who work on both the operating systems. However, Windows was mainly optimized for NTFS (New Technology file system) format, on the other hand, APFS was created for the Mac OS.As we all know NTFS is not compatible with Mac and similarly APFS does not get along with Windows. Fortunately, you could create an external hard disk which is compatible with both Windows and Mac OS with the help of this article. This does not require any third-party application or assistance of any additional software. Let’s get down to make the external hard drive compatible with Mac and Windows.

How to create an external hard disk compatible on Mac and Windows?

Lets us first understand how to make the external hard drive compatible with Mac and Windows? using exFAT and Dual formatting?

1. exFAT – Formatting a hard drive with the exFAT file system. Since exFAT formatted external hard disk are readable and writable by both the operating systems
2. Dual formatting – If you are a user who prefers to have both APFS and NTFS file system on a single external hard disk, you can partition and dual format the hard drive.

Steps on how to format an external drive on macOS with exFAT

1. Connect the drive to the Mac.
2. Open Disk Utility. The easiest way to do that is to hit CMD and the spacebar at the same time and type in Disk Utility to find the program.
3. In disk utility, you will have an internal and external drive
4. Select the drive you want to format and click erase.
5. Give the partition a name and select exFAT for the format.
6. Click Erase to finish and you will complete the procedure.

Steps on how to format an external drive on Windows with exFAT

1. Connect the drive to your Windows PC.
2. Open the Disk Management tool. You can do that by typing 'disk format' or 'disk management' in Windows search or going to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Create and format hard disk partitions.
3. Right-click on the external drive's partition or unallocated space you want to format and choose New Simple Volume
4. Follow the wizard to choose a volume size.
5. Assign a drive letter.
6. Choose exFAT as the file system in the Format Partition screen.
7. Give the volume a new name, click next and finish to complete the procedure.

Note - Your exFAT-formatted drive or partition can now be used for both Windows and Mac. Keep in mind that using a drive frequently between Windows and Mac could increase the chances of hard disk corruption, so make sure you have a backup of the data any drive. In case if you happened to lose you will need a reliable third party application to fix the issue.

How to Dual Format an external hard disk?

Let us understand how to make the external hard drive compatible with Mac and Windows using dual formatting?

If the user desires to use NTFS, APFS or HFS+ for any specific reasons and does not want to opt for exFAT, there is another option. Instead of formatting a drive with a single file system, the user can create two partitions and format those with NTFS, APFS, HFS+ or any other file systems.

How to partition external hard disk on Mac?

1. Connect the external hard disk to the Mac.
2. Click on Disk utility. Select the drive from the left sidebar, then click the Partition tab.
3. Under Partition layout, select '2 Partitions.'
4. The user can adjust the size of the partition based on the desired requirement.
5. Once adjusting based on the desired storage requirement, the user will able to choose the preferred operating system (NTFS or APFS) and complete the procedure.

How to partition external hard disk on Windows?

1. Plug the external hard drive into your Windows PC.
2. Open the Start menu and search for Disk Management.
3. Select the search result and the Disk Management utility will launch. In the left sidebar, you should see your hard drive and its partitions
4. Select the drive which you want to be made into a partition. Right-click the Windows partition and select Shrink partition.
5. In the Format dialog box, under File System, select the desired file system (NTFS). Click OK and complete the format process.

The chances of losing data in this scenario are comparatively high if anything goes wrong in formatting. It is recommended to have a backup of your data before performing this action. If you don’t have a backup you will need a professional hard drive recovery software to recover your lost or formatted data.

Remo hard drive recovery software is one such professional hard drive recovery tool which can easily help you to recover data from your lost or formatted hard disk. The tool supports more than 300 file formats with which you can be sure of recovering files of any format. The tool comes with two types of scan features, Normal scan, and Deep Scan which scans the hard drive sector by sector which ensures hassle-free data recovery.

FAQ

Format Portable Hard Drive For Mac And Pc

1. What is Hard format and Quick Format? Is data recovery possible in these scenarios?

Mac And Pc Compatible External Hard Drive

• Hard format - A hard format is an option in Windows, which allows the user to format the whole disk/partition. The disadvantages of this feature are that the data residing on this disk is permanently lost and cannot be recovered
• Quick Format - Quick format is a feature in which the Windows allows the user to format the disk or partition. Know more on how to perform quick format and recover data after quick format here.

2. How can I use NTFS on Mac?
A. Yes, you can use NTFS on Mac only in read-only mode and it cannot write or overwrite any of these files.

Formatting Hard Drive For Pc And Mac

3. How can I use APFS on Windows?
A. Windows is capable of understanding the file format and can read the APFS, but cannot write or overwrite any of these files.