# External hard drive for mac / windows
**URL:** https://forums.speedlife.net/t/external-hard-drive-for-mac-windows/268248
**Category:** NYSpeed Off Topic
**Created:** [February 15, 2014, 7:35pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/external-hard-drive-for-mac-windows/268248 "2014-02-15T19:35:43Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Coldaccord](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/Coldaccord)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2014, 7:35pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/external-hard-drive-for-mac-windows/268248/1 "2014-02-15T19:35:43Z")
Just got a WD My Passport Ultra 1tb external harddrive. I will be using it mostly with my mac, however a friend with a PC has some music she’d like to give me. Do I need to format the HD with a third party software?
Some googling shows me PC uses the NTFS file system and mac uses HFS. I will be using it for my computer 99.9% of the time but want to get these beats from this grrrl. Any disadvantages/how do I use the FAT32 format to use both?
If it matters this is on a few year old macbook so I don’t have USB 3.0
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### Author:  [@97FormulaWS-6](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/97FormulaWS-6)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2014, 6:38am UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/external-hard-drive-for-mac-windows/268248/2 "2014-02-16T06:38:38Z")
I’d just use Google drive or whatever to do the transfer and leave it formatted for mac. This is how we handle transferring files in between at school; easiest way we found.
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### Author:  [@TradersBASE](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/TradersBASE)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2014, 7:27am UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/external-hard-drive-for-mac-windows/268248/3 "2014-02-16T07:27:48Z")
Mac can read/write FAT formatted drives.
Mac can read but not write to NTFS formatted drives.
Mac natively uses HFS+.
In a cross platform situation I suggest FAT formatting unless you have individual files larger than 4gb.
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### Author:  [@LZ1](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/LZ1)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2014, 8:14am UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/external-hard-drive-for-mac-windows/268248/4 "2014-02-16T08:14:03Z")
Just use FAT32
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### Author:  [@TradersBASE](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/TradersBASE)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2014, 9:44am UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/external-hard-drive-for-mac-windows/268248/5 "2014-02-16T09:44:35Z")
> [@LZ](#):
>
> Just use FAT32
What if he has porn rips bigger than 4gb each? I don’t always rip porno flicks, but when I do it’s at 4k resolution.
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### Author:  [@evane](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/evane)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2014, 1:18pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/external-hard-drive-for-mac-windows/268248/6 "2014-02-16T13:18:26Z")
> [@LZ](#):
>
> Just use FAT32
Correction format using “ExFat” since fat32 doesn’t support large HD’s or large files.
Window XP Sp2 and higher and Mac OS 10.6.5 or higher support it.
> **[exFAT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT)**
>
> exFAT (Extensible File Allocation Table) is a file system introduced by Microsoft in 2006 and optimized for flash memory such as USB flash drives and SD cards. exFAT was proprietary until 28 August 2019, when Microsoft published its specification. Microsoft owns patents on several elements of its design.
> exFAT can be used where NTFS is not a feasible solution (due to data-structure overhead), but where a greater file-size limit than that of the standard FAT32 file system (i.e. 4 GB) is required....
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In Mavericks (should be there in older versions too) go to Disk Utility and select your HD and goto Erase tab and select the type as exFat