Your guide
Shop for Mac external hard drives at Best Buy. Compare and read customer reviews to purchase the Apple hard drive that fits your needs.
- Justin Krajeski
After 20 hours of new research and testing, we found that the best external desktop hard drive for most people is Western Digital’s 4 TB My Book. The My Book is reliable, fast, and less expensive than the other desktop drives we tested, plus it has enough space for your future storage needs and a long, three-year warranty.
Our pick
4 TB Western Digital My Book
The 4 TB My Book is reliable, fast, and cheaper than the competition.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $95.
But all of the desktop drives we tested this year were good. We found the speed differences between them to be small: All but one of our finalists performed within about 20 seconds of one another when transferring a Blu-ray movie, and all completed a Time Machine backup within 4 minutes of one another. Because they perform so similarly, we recommend getting the cheapest desktop hard drive you can find from a trustworthy maker. Right now, that means the 4 TB WD My Book.
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Runner-up
WD Elements (4 TB)
Western Digital’s 4 TB Elements is about as fast as our top pick, but its warranty doesn’t last as long.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $95.
If the 4 TB My Book is out of stock or the price goes up, Western Digital’s 4 TB Elements is a great and dependable alternative. The Elements is about as fast as our top pick: In our tests, its average write speed was 7.7 MB/s slower, and it took about 5 seconds longer to transfer a Blu-ray film, but those differences were within the margin of error. At this writing, it costs only 46¢ more per terabyte, but prices fluctuate; if you find the Elements for less than the My Book, it’s a better buy. This model lacks backup software, though, and it has a shorter, two-year warranty.
Also great
WD My Book (8 TB)
The 8 TB version of the Western Digital My Book offers reliability, fast transfer speeds, and more storage than our other picks.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $170.
If you need more storage, we recommend the Western Digital 8 TB My Book. The 8 TB My Book is just as reliable as our top pick, and it was about as fast in our Blu-ray and HD Tune tests, but about 4 minutes slower in our Time Machine testing. It’s cheaper per terabyte than the other My Book models, but it still costs around $170 at this writing, so we recommend it only if you know you need that much space.
Everything we recommend
Our pick
4 TB Western Digital My Book
The 4 TB My Book is reliable, fast, and cheaper than the competition.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $95.
Runner-up
WD Elements (4 TB)
Western Digital’s 4 TB Elements is about as fast as our top pick, but its warranty doesn’t last as long.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $95.
Also great
WD My Book (8 TB)
The 8 TB version of the Western Digital My Book offers reliability, fast transfer speeds, and more storage than our other picks.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $170.
The research
Why you should trust us
Wirecutter has researched and recommended hard drives since early 2012, and our PC team has over eight years of combined experience testing hard drives and solid-state drives—as your guide, I’ve spent the past two years reviewing hard drives and portable SSDs, too. We’ve collectively put in hundreds of hours researching and testing hard drives over the past few years.
Who this is for
If you’re not backing up the important documents and photos on your computer, you should start. Your computer’s internal drive will stop working someday, and unless your data is backed up, it’ll be gone forever. Fortunately, backing up your data is easy, and getting started takes only a few minutes: Read our advice and set up a system that will back up your files automatically both to an external hard drive and the cloud. Just backing up to one or the other isn’t enough; having both on-site and cloud backups ensures that your data stays safe from localized threats such as fire, theft, or natural disaster, as well as Internet outages or disruptions to the cloud backup provider. A desktop external hard drive is a great local backup for a computer that mostly stays parked on a desk.
You should consider replacing your backup drives between the third and sixth year of use. If your drive dies and you have a cloud backup, you won’t lose data, but restoring from the cloud will take a very long time. According to statistics from cloud backup service Backblaze, hard drives are most likely to fail either within the first 18 months of use or after three years. About 5 percent of drives fail in the first 18 months of use, with the failure rate dipping to about 1.5 percent for another 18 months. At three years of service, the failure rate jumps to almost 12 percent. At four years, the failure rate is 20 percent. Judging from five years of data, Backblaze estimates that more than half of hard drives will last six years.
If you spend most of your time working at one desk, you should get a desktop external drive. But if you frequently move between locations, a portable external drive is the better choice. They’re more expensive per terabyte than bigger desktop models, and they’re a bit slower, but portable hard drives are smaller and lighter than desktop drives and don’t need an additional power adapter. They’re also designed to withstand a little more abuse (although one bump can still lead to failure).
How we picked
Ideally, an external hard drive is something you don’t notice much. It should sit on your desk, quietly spinning away, storing and backing up your data without a lot of setup or ongoing maintenance. These are the features you should look for in a desktop hard drive, in rough order of importance:
- Reliability: Although reliability is the most important factor for any storage device, solid information on drive reliability can be hard to come by. Only three companies still manufacture hard drives—Western Digital (which also makes HGST drives), Seagate, and Toshiba—and all of them make reliable drives. But all hard drives die. The vast majority of drives from these major manufacturers will be fine, but it’s still possible to buy a bad egg that will die too soon.
- Speed: Most of the drives we’ve tested in 2018 are about the same speed, and we haven’t seen major speed increases in desktop hard drives over the past few years. This round, we considered only those drives with USB 3.0 connections. Anything faster isn’t necessary for hard drives, because they’re limited by disk speed, not the USB interface.
- Price: We found that most people buy 4 TB and 8 TB drives by looking at Amazon reviews for our top picks. Although a higher-capacity drive is more cost-effective per terabyte, 8 TB external desktop hard drives are nearly twice as expensive as 4 TB drives, for more storage than most people need. Since many desktop drives nowadays offer similar performance, the less expensive they are, the better.
- Capacity: We focused on 4 TB hard drives because of their balance of value and total cost. We also have an 8 TB pick for people who need more storage.
- Warranty and customer service: A good warranty is important in case you get a lemon. Most of the external hard drives we tested have two-year warranties, but some have three-year warranties. Responsive customer service is important too, in case you have trouble backing up your data.
- Useful software: Backup software is a nice perk, but you can find lots of free alternatives and other great options for online backup services. If you don’t need the extra features such software provides, setting it up on every computer you use isn’t worth the time and effort. Dragging and dropping files works just fine for manual backups, and your OS’s built-in backup utility suffices for automatic ones.
We also made note of drive noise and extra USB ports as we tested the external desktop hard drives. These factors aren’t dealbreakers, but they are good to keep in mind.
How we tested
After narrowing our list of finalists by price and capacity, we tested four 4 TB desktop hard drives and three 8 TB models. For each one, we ran HD Tune Pro, a benchmarking program that tests transfer speeds and access time across the entire disk. You can read a more in-depth explanation of the program at the HD Tune website. We also timed the file transfer of a 45.5 GB rip of a Blu-ray movie from start to finish, running each transfer three times and determining the average to rule out performance hiccups. Finally, we timed how long each external hard drive took to back up with Time Machine on a 2016 MacBook Pro.
To spot any widespread reliability issues, we read through Amazon reviews for each of the drives we tested, and we counted the number of reported drive failures. This method has shortcomings: For one, people are more likely to post a review when they have a problem. Also, because of the limited information available in some reviews, it can be hard to differentiate between hardware failures and software issues or user errors that could cause problems with a drive. About half the drives we tested for this update are new, so they didn’t have many Amazon reviews. But this approach is the best we have for now.
We also looked at Backblaze’s hard drive reliability ratings from 2017, which are based on more than 90,000 drives the company uses in its cloud backup servers. Backup servers are a very different environment than a box on your desk: Bare drives in servers are accessed more often and are subject to more vibrations and more heat, whereas drives in desktop enclosures have more potential points of failure between the power connector, the USB connector, and the USB-to-SATA logic board. Even so, the Backblaze study is the largest, most recent sample of hard drive failures we have access to, and it’s always a fascinating read.
Our pick: WD My Book (4 TB)
Our pick
4 TB Western Digital My Book
The 4 TB My Book is reliable, fast, and cheaper than the competition.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $95.
Western Digital’s 4 TB My Book is the best desktop hard drive for most people because it’s reliable and it offers the best balance of speed and price. It was about as fast as the competition in all of our tests, it’s the least expensive drive we tested at this writing, and it has a longer warranty (three years) than the other contenders.
Although no hard drive is immune from failure, the WD My Book has proven reliable. We found just 21 reported failures out of 358 Amazon reviews of the 4 TB model, or 6 percent. Backblaze’s 2017 report notes that WD’s 4 TB drives had a low, 2.2 percent annualized failure rate. Neither of these research methods is a perfect indicator of the My Book’s reliability, but they are the best we have.
We tested how fast our 4 TB and 5 TB desktop hard drive contenders could transfer a Blu-ray movie. They all performed similarly, although the Toshiba Canvio was a bit faster than the competition. Shorter bars indicate better performance.
Most of the drives we tested performed similarly, with the 4 TB WD My Book having a slight edge in most of our tests. In our Blu-ray transfer test, all of the 4 TB drives we tested were within the margin of error of one another, but the 5 TB Toshiba Canvio was about 30 seconds faster than the competition. (That drive, however, costs considerably more.)
The 4 TB WD My Book performed a little better than the 4 TB competition in HD Tune read and write tests. The Toshiba Canvio was the fastest (and most expensive) drive we tested. Longer bars indicate better performance.
The 4 TB WD My Book was the fastest drive we tested at creating a backup with Time Machine, although all of the drives we tested were pretty quick. Shorter bars indicate better performance.
In HD Tune testing, the 4 TB WD My Book had a read speed of 143.8 megabytes per second and a write speed of 138.4 MB/s, operating a little faster than most of the competition. And it had the fastest Time Machine backup score of all the 4 TB drives we tested. Most of the drives performed similarly in these tests, except for the 4 TB Seagate Backup Plus Hub, which was notably slower.
The 4 TB My Book is the most cost-effective drive we found at the time of our research and writing. Although prices on hard drives fluctuate frequently, our pick was the least expensive in its competitive field: At the time, it cost around $96, or $24 per terabyte, while the majority of the drives we tested cost more than $100. Because all of the drives we tested are good, though, we recommend you buy the cheapest option available if prices change.
WD backs the 4 TB My Book with a three-year warranty, longer coverage than the competition offers. The drive did not get hot during our testing, and although this My Book occasionally made a low humming noise while we moved files around, we don’t think that’s cause for concern; all of the drives we tested make some noise.
Using the included WD Discovery app, you can import your data from a cloud storage or social media account to your drive. You can also use WD Drive Utilities to check for potential drive failures, major performance problems, and bad sectors on the My Book. (In addition, you can use it to permanently erase all the data on your drive.) You can activate 256-AES encryption by downloading WD’s Security software, enabling it, and setting a password.
Wirecutter staffers have used the WD My Book (in varying capacities) with no issue. Senior editor Nathan Edwards has owned the 6 TB version of the drive for about a year: “It's quieter than my old backup drive and relatively good-looking,” he said. “I don't bother it and it doesn't bother me, and my computer is backed up, so that seems good.”
Runner-up: WD Elements (4 TB)
Runner-up
WD Elements (4 TB)
Western Digital’s 4 TB Elements is about as fast as our top pick, but its warranty doesn’t last as long.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $95.
If the 4 TB My Book is unavailable, or if its price goes up, WD’s 4 TB Elements desktop drive is a great second choice. It’s a reliable drive, although it isn’t quite as fast as our top pick. The difference in transfer time wasn’t substantial in any of our tests, though, and it costs about the same as the My Book per terabyte. It has the same software as our top pick too, but its warranty is only two years—one year less than the My Book’s coverage.
The Elements is about as reliable as the 4 TB My Book. We found just five reported failures out of 168 Amazon reviews for the Elements 4 TB option, giving this external hard drive a 3 percent failure rate. That’s a lower failure rate than our top pick has, but the Elements has roughly half as many reviews at this writing, so the reported failure rate may not be comparable.
In our testing, the Elements was about as quick as the 4 TB My Book, falling behind in our Blu-ray transfer test by only 5 seconds. In HD Tune tests, the Elements had a slightly slower write speed compared with our top pick, but the two models’ read speeds were even. And when we backed up to the Elements with Time Machine, it was the second-fastest drive we tested, falling just behind our top pick.
The WD Elements has a two-year warranty, one year less than our top pick, and it doesn’t come with any backup software. But that omission isn’t a dealbreaker because dragging and dropping files or using some other free backup program is an equally good option. Like our top pick, this drive did not get hot during testing, although it did make a little humming noise from time to time.
If you need more storage: WD My Book (8 TB)
Also great
WD My Book (8 TB)
The 8 TB version of the Western Digital My Book offers reliability, fast transfer speeds, and more storage than our other picks.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $170.
If you want more space—say, you have a ton of large photos or videos or an existing media library and need room to expand in the future—Western Digital’s 8 TB My Book is the best option. Like our top pick, the higher-capacity WD My Book has a low, 6 percent reported failure rate (judging from Amazon reviews), and it performed the best of the three 8 TB options we tested. It’s also less expensive than the other 8 TB drives we tested, and it has the longest warranty. Currently the 8 TB My Book costs about $70 more than our top pick, though, so we recommend it only if you want the extra storage.
(We recommend the similarly performing WD 8 TB Easystore if it’s the same price as—or cheaper than—the 8 TB My Book. Because the Easystore is usually more expensive, we think the My Book is the better 8 TB choice for most people’s needs.)
While reading through 326 Amazon reviews of the 8 TB My Book, we found only 20 reviews—or 6 percent—that mentioned drive failure. This result was better than that for the 8 TB Seagate we tested, which had an 11 percent reported failure rate, or 62 noted failures out of 570 reviews on Amazon. The 8 TB Easystore had a mere 1.25 percent reported failure rate on Best Buy’s site—34 noted failures out of 2,708 reviews—but these results aren’t directly comparable because they’re from different retailers with different demographics and customer review systems.
Although the 8 TB WD My Book was the slowest in our Blu-ray read and write tests, all of the models we tested performed similarly. Shorter bars indicate better performance.
In our Blu-ray transfer tests, the 8 TB WD My Book was quick—it read a large Blu-ray video file in 4 minutes, 28 seconds and wrote that file in 4 minutes, 27 seconds. Although it was technically the slowest of the three 8 TB models we tested in this regard, all three performed within 15 seconds of one another in this test.
The 8 TB WD Easystore was faster than the 8 TB WD My Book in the HD Tune tests—but not by much. Longer bars indicate better performance.
The 8 TB My Book performed well in our HD Tune read and write tests, with results of 134 MB/s and 139.9 MB/s, respectively. It was significantly faster than the Seagate model in this test, but a little slower than the WD Easystore, falling short by 12.3 MB/s on reads and 5 MB/s on writes. The My Book also landed in the middle of the pack when backing up via Time Machine, storing 37.8 GB in 25 minutes, 49 seconds. The Easystore was about 2 minutes faster in this test.
The 8 TB WD My Book was about as fast as the 8 TB Seagate in our Time Machine backup test. The 8 TB WD Easystore was faster than both models by about 2 minutes. Shorter bars indicate better performance.
The 8 TB My Book is cheaper, as of this writing, and available at more retailers than the 8 TB WD Easystore. If you see the price on the Easystore come down, though, it’s worth buying.
The 8 TB My Book includes the same backup software as our top pick. It also comes with a longer warranty than the other 8 TB options we tested, three years of coverage.
The competition
Every hard drive we tested is adequate for the task of backing up your computer; only minor differences in speed, price, warranty, and included software differentiate them.
The WD Easystore is available in both 4 TB and 8 TB capacities; it’s also available only at Best Buy. While the 4 TB version’s price is often double that of our top picks (around $200), the 8 TB model’s price appears to fluctuate: The 8 TB Easystore cost around $140 while we were researching for this guide, but it costs $300 as of this writing. If you can find it for less than our current 8 TB pick, we encourage you to buy it; this model was the fastest 8 TB external hard drive in our HD Tune tests and Time Machine testing. If not, the small speed difference isn’t worth spending $15 to $130 more than what you would for the 8 TB My Book.
Although Toshiba’s 4 TB Canvio for Desktop is a great desktop hard drive, it’s quite expensive. It outperformed the WD My Book in most of our tests, but it costs nearly $20 more as of this writing. We don’t think the jump in speed is worth spending that much more money for most people, because it didn’t offer a noticeable improvement.
Seagate discontinued our previous top pick, the 4 TB Backup Plus Desktop, in favor of the new Backup Plus Hub.
Seagate’s 4 TB Backup Plus Hub fell behind our top pick in HD Tune testing by 15.8 MB/s on reads and 7 MB/s on writes. Although other external hard drives we tested (such as our runner-up pick) were similarly slow when writing files, none of them were as slow as the Seagate at reading them. The Seagate fell behind our top pick by 3 minutes in our Time Machine testing, and it was around 2.5 minutes slower than our runner-up in that regard. This model is a fine external drive, but because it costs about the same as our main pick and runner-up for slower performance, our picks are a better value.
The 8 TB Seagate Backup Plus Hub faced problems similar to those of the 4 TB model. It performed well in Blu-ray testing against our other 8 TB options and did fine in Time Machine tests, but it was notably slow during the HD Tune test. Compared with our 8 TB pick, it was 17.4 MB/s slower in the HD Tune read test, and 31.2 MB/s slower in the write test.
At the time of our research, the Seagate Backup Plus Hub for Mac was around $30 more expensive than the regular Seagate Backup Plus Hub we tested (and $40 more than our top pick). Because the two drives appeared to be the same otherwise, we dismissed them.
The Seagate Expansion Desktop was significantly slower than our top picks when we tested it in late 2016. It also has a shorter, one-year warranty and lacks backup software.
Other drives from G-Tech, LaCie, OWC, and Transcend were too expensive, ranging from $170 to $420 for 4 TB models—1.7 to 4.3 times as much as our top pick. Many suffered from limited availability, too.
Sources
- Brian Beach, How long do disk drives last?, Backblaze, November 12, 2013
- Andy Klein, Backblaze Hard Drive Stats for 2017, Backblaze, February 1, 2018
- How to buy storage, CNET
- Lyle Smith, WD My Book Review, StorageReview.com, October 11, 2016
- Dong Ngo, WD My Book (Fall 2016) review, CNET, October 11, 2016
Need to read Mac drives in Windows?
Unfortunately, it’s not a straightforward process; you can’t just connect the Mac drive and expect it to work. Here’s everything you need to know to get it working.
Why Can’t Windows Read Mac Drives?
Windows and macOS use different file systems. Windows uses the NTFS file system for its internal drives, whereas Apple replaced HFS+ with its successor--Apple File System (APFS)—in early 2017. Today, APFS is used on Macs, iPhones, iPads, and Apple TVs.
External hard disks and USB drives are generally formatted with the Windows FAT32 file system for maximum compatibility. Most devices, including Macs, can read and write from FAT32 devices. There’s even a way to make a Mac read an NTFS driveWrite To Your NTFS Drives Again in OS X El Capitan (For Free)Write To Your NTFS Drives Again in OS X El Capitan (For Free)Some of the most common methods of adding NTFS support broke with the recent release of El Capitan, but you can still write to your Windows drives with a bit of tinkering.Read More.
All new Macs will be formatted with APFS. Older Mac drives may still be formatted with the HFS+ file system. Windows can’t read either file system by default.
We’ll show you how to access your Mac-formatted APFS or HFS+ drive on Windows.
How to Read APFS on Windows
Firstly, let’s look at how to read the newer Apple File System format on Windows. All these apps will allow you to read drives from any updated Apple device, not just Macs.
1. MacDrive
MacDrive has been one of the go-to apps for a long time. The first version was released way back in 1996. If you’re prepared to spend some money, you don’t need to look elsewhere.
The app works with APFS drives and HFS+ drives.
Unlike some of the options we’ll discuss later, MacDrive lets you read and write data to your Mac-formatted drive directly from Windows.
The app is focused around the freshly redesigned Disk Management Window. It acts as a hub for all the Mac drives connected to Windows.
You will also be able to see your APFS or HFS+ drive directly within File Explorer, allowing easy integration with the rest of the Windows operating system.
Other useful features include the ability to create and partition Mac disks direct from your PC, a powerful disk repair feature, and robust security tools.
The standard version costs $49.99. There’s also a Pro version. It adds several extra features, including automatic file defragmentation, support for RAID setups, and a way to create Mac ISO files.
A five-day free trial is available.
Download:MacDrive ($49.99)
2. Paragon APFS for Windows
Paragon APFS for Windows is another paid app. It is the main competitor of MacDrive.
The app provides read and write access to APFS-formatted partitions, read and write access to compressed and cloned files, and read-only support for encrypted volumes.
It supports disk auto-mounting at start-up, but doesn’t have MacDrive’s partition tools.
MacDrive has one big advantage over Paragon’s app: HFS+ support. Paragon APFS for Windows only supports APFS-formatted drives. If you have some older Mac drives lying around that are still running HFS+, you would need to separately purchase Paragon HFS+ for Windows. MacDrive, therefore, is a more economical option.
One license—which costs $49.95—works on three Windows PCs.
Download:Paragon APFS for Windows ($49.95)
3. UFS Explorer Standard Access
Our third and final recommendation for reading APFS drives on Windows is UFS Explorer Standard Recovery. Once again, it’s a paid option. The app will cost you €21.95.
UFS Explorer Standard Recovery is the most versatile app on this list. It can read the two formats we care about—APFS and HFS+—as well as NTFS, FAT, FAT32, exFAT, SGI XFS, Linux JFS, Unix/BSD, UFS/UFS2, and VMware VMFS.
As such, this is the app you should choose if you find yourself hopping between lots of different operating systems during your day.
UFS Explorer Standard Recovery also comes with RAID support as standard. The app has a built-in RAID builder, so you can customize it for your array.
There is a free version of the app with no time limits, but it will only let you copy files smaller than 256KB in size.
Download: UFS Explorer Standard Access (€21.95)
How to Read HFS+ on Windows
If your Mac-formatted drive is still running HFS+, use one of these three methods instead.
1. Install Apple HFS+ Drivers
If you only need read access, you can install the Apple HFS+ drivers for Windows. Be sure to remove Paragon or MacDrive before proceeding.
Download the correct Windows driver package, then follow these steps:
- Copy the ApplsHFS.sys and AppleMNT.sys files to C:WindowsSystem32drivers
- Merge the Add_AppleHFS.reg file with your Windows registry.
- Restart your system.
The video above also demonstrates the process.
After restarting, your Mac-formatted drive should show up under This PC. This method only gives you read access to the drive. If you would like to edit or delete files, try one of the alternative methods below.
2. HFSExplorer
HFSExplorer is completely free. You can use it to access Mac file systems from Windows without paying a dime. The developer hasn’t updated it since October 2015 due to the arrival of APFS, but it still works on older systems.
![Computer Computer](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/VnksSnLAibc/maxresdefault.jpg)
HFSExplorer requires Java. We generally recommend against having Java installed, but it’s necessary here unless you want to spend money. You also need to run the app as an Admin.
This tool is simple to use. Connect your Mac-formatted drive to your Windows system, open HFSExplorer, and click File > Load File System From Device. HFSExplorer can automatically locate any connected devices with HFS+ file systems and open them. You can then extract files from the HFSExplorer window to your Windows drive.
Note that HFSExplorer is read-only, so you can’t modify or delete files on your Mac drive. It also doesn’t integrate with Windows File Explorer—files are available in the HFSExplorer application and you must copy them elsewhere.
Download: HFSExplorer (Free)
3. Paragon HFS+ for Windows
Paragon HFS+ for Windows is a paid application, but it distinguishes itself with additional features.
Unlike HFSExplorer, Paragon HFS+ for Windows provides full read/write access to Mac drives and promises high performance. It even integrates HFS+ file systems with Windows Explorer or File Explorer on Windows. Any Windows program can read from or write to the Mac drive.
The app costs $19.95, but it also offers a 10-day free trial. If you just need to recover files from a drive, 10 days is plenty of time to install this file system driver, copy your files over, and uninstall it.
Paragon HFS+ doesn’t need Java to work.
Download: Paragon HFS+ for Windows ($19.95)
Or Format the Mac Drive for Windows
If you have a Mac drive lying around and you no longer have a Mac, you’re not stuck with the Mac file system forever. After recovering the files from your drive with one of the tools above, you can then format the drive and convert it to a standard FAT32 partition that will work with most devices.
Formatting will erase all the files on your drive, so make sure you have backed up your files. To format the drive, just use the dialog that appears when you connect the drive to your computer.
Check out our guide to learn more about using FAT32How to Format a Large Hard Drive With FAT or FAT32How to Format a Large Hard Drive With FAT or FAT32The FAT and FAT32 formats support up to 16TB. Yet Windows sets a 32GB limit for formatting with FAT or FAT32. We'll show you how to format larger drives.Read More.
Explore more about: File System, Hard Drive, Mac Tips, USB Drive, Windows Tips.
- Apple data is so special that you have to buy some 'app' to access them from Windows.
Send them to dev/null - android mobile can also read the files using OTG micro usb port :)
- Thank you so much for this. Just what I need.Sometime back, my Mac has been acting up, to the point where I can't use it anymore. I'm thinking of reformatting it or re-installing Mac OS X.On the other hand, my 1TB external hard drive was initially formatted to be read and written with Mac only. Now, I have a Win PC but no access to the files there. I will surely try this out.Again, thank you very much. Cheers!
- The Java application worked fine for me. Lucky I had the VM installed...
- I bought today a WD my passport 25E3 from Curry Pc world. I was talking with the guy about Windows and an upgrade to my HP with another HP. For some reason ha gave me an external drive for MAC! I didn't notice until it was too late like why the hell my laptop can't see the hard and no drivers found for it. I literally black out when I saw it. No exchange or ref for opened boxes. But God I found you! and after bashing my head a few time, as I m not an expert I have managed to format my hard and now I can seeee it! Thank you sooo much!
- This didn't work. Gave me the blue screen of death. Not worth it.
- Thanks soo much!
- Very helpful!
- Another free way to do it - Download Ubuntu Linux, burn to a DVD (or put on a flash memory), boot from that - you can run Ubuntu without installing it. Ubuntu will see the Mac device as well as your Windows devices, and you can easily copy files from one to the other.This method doesn't many ANY changes to your Windows software.
--Gary- Thanks Gary. These are the answers I've been looking for a long time. And it's free. Bill
- Some of these programs cant access files if they are in 'core storage'. If your Mac is running OSX Lion or something newer this may be the case.
- Tip: You must run HFS Explorer as Administrator on Windows in order for it to function properly.
- thanks mate this Works. coz im using a hackintosh Laptop :)
- I cannot get HFS Explorer to find my HFS+ formatted drive - containing a Time Machine backup of my MAC - when i plug the external hard drive into my USB port on my HP laptop running Windows 10. In fact the laptop doesn't even see the drive at all when I plug it in.What could the problem be?
- Can a 'seagate for mac' slim drive be formatted NTFS (not fat 32) and used with windows 10 for external backup drive? Thanks.
- Don't install Paragon HFS+!!! This program is not working and you can't remove it from your computer!
- I've distrusted Paragon's filesystem code for years. About a decade ago I bought their Windows driver for reading EXT3 (Linux) filesystems. It seemed to work OK for about a month, but then suddenly after writing a file under Windows, the entire EXT3 filesystem became unreadable! Creating robust filesystem drivers is hard. A bug that only occurs on one write in a billion but that clobbers some critical element in some data structure the filesystem depends on can end up with you LOSING ALL THE FILES in the filesystem! Given the high risk of data loss, extensive testing is necessary before a filesystem driver can be deemed trustworthy, and it doesn't look like Paragon's testing is up to the task.
- Be very cautious installing Paragon HFS+ on Windows 10. I used it on 8 with no issues, but twice I have tried to install it on Win 10, and both times it's bricked my computer with an INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE error...I found out you have to go into your BIOS and set your SATA mode to IDE, then boot into Windows Safe Mode, do a System Restore, back into the BIOS and set SATA mode back to AHCI, then you can boot normally.I didn't want to spring for MacDrive, but at least it works.
- This exact thing happened to me as well. I am in the process of reinstalling 100s of GBs of programs right now.
- Same issue reported by Terry, Paragon HFS+ trial is useless and doesn't do anything. The help is an equally useless small bit of text.Transmac won't let you read/write but it works okay. I find I have to close / open the program once in a while to continue working with a drive.MacDrive despite costing the most was the one that worked. I recommend this.
- I needed to open some to open a DMG of an entire Apple DVD - no thanks to the waste of time MacDrive 'trial'.All I had to do was Extract the DMG using 7-zip. Done.To examine and edit Apple .pkgs or .mpkgs, I needed Transmac.
Note that it will BURN a DMG to disc, but just the uncompressed version (now an ISO) since its a PC. - For step 4, formatting the drive to ExFat would be better than FAT32. FAT32 has a size limit of around 4GB, so you can't put any files over that on there. ExFat has unlimited size limits and can read/write from a Mac and PC.
- But ExFat is legally-encumbered so that anyone who tries to write a Linux driver for it is subject to a nasty lawsuit from Microsoft. FAT32 is the only filesystem I know of that can be both read and written under all three major operating systems (Windows, OS-X, and Linux) as well as by various special purpose devices like digital cameras. It's unfortunate that FAT32 is an archaic design and has some serious limitations, but if your files are smaller than 4 GB and the partition containing your filesystem is under 2 TB, FAT32 provides portability between OS's that no other filesystem can.
- For the record, The Paragon app won't let you run the free trial any more. I downloaded the app TWICE, restarted the computer both times, and nada...zero...zilch...bupkis...no funtioning app. What gives?? All I can access is the help menu, which ain't helpful at all! And like Pablo said earlier, Why offer a 'trial' version, if you won't let us TRY it?!?! Dumb!
- MacDrive no longer allows access to Mac drives during the evaluation period... How we are supposed to evaluate it without actually evaluating it is beyond my little brain.
- Is MacDrive the only option that allows formatting disks in HFS+ format (and is that identical to or is MacDrive able to format and partition Macintosh Journaled volumes?) ?My wife's iMac HD died, I replaced it with a Crucial M550 1TB SSD and now it's telling me the disk is bad. All I have to check to see if the drive is actually bad is a Windows 7 x64 machine as her Air sure won't help. After two supposed hard drive failures in 3 months I'm a bit suspicious of the SATA controller or cabling. The Crucial SSD firmware update LINUX disc that boots a Mac or PC to update firmware failed repeatedly on the Mac with an error 13, which according to Crucial is common and issued an RMA. After I pulled the drive, I decided to plug into my test PC and the firmware updated fine and the disk management utility sees 3 healthy partitions, but I can't read them without one of the products mentioned in this thread. It sounds like MacDrive is the one I need, but seek confirmation as I do intend to purchase the product that best suits.
- Paragon did everything i needed it to do, read, edit and save , job done!With the trial version, happy to buy after trial experience.
- Hmmm, HFS+ for Windows. After trialling the free version and finding it appeared to do what I wanted it to do and did it reasonably well and simply, I thought I'd do the right thing purchased a license.
But the purchased licence won't load while the trial version is installed & I can't uninstall the trial version despite being the administrator and disabling the User Account Control. So far, after 2 weeks, I'm still waiting for a response to my request for help from Paragon and it seems I could be waiting a while.
Apparently, irrespective of the fact I have purchased a license, because I didn't also purchase a 'support package' I've gone on a 'no guarantee' waiting list while those who purchased a support package get preferential treatment. (WTF! Doesn't Paragon understand any person who goes to the effort of purchasing a license expects sufficient technical support to at least get what was purchased working. But apparently not. Further it seems some customers are more important that others).
So, my strong recommendation is, 'think 2 or 3 times about when you want the application to work before you purchase. If you don't need it for several weeks, then go ahead but if you want it to work now, or if you expect support for your purchased license, FORGET IT!!! - The problem with Microsoft proprietary disk formats like NTFS or EXFAT is that there are no repair tools for other platforms which can reliably detect & fix errors on the volume if it becomes corrupted. So if you dont want to buy a Windows machine just to maintain your portable drives, dont use Microsoft formats.
- I am a Mac user, video editor. The Fat32 limit of 4 GB makes it unsuable for my needs.I once had to prepare files for a non-profit client using windows XP. I instructed them to use the update for ExFat and prepared an ExFat drive to mail them original high quality HD video files on. It all went well until I realized some characters are illegal in ExFat and that made for a lot of initial problems. Once I removed any character like: !@#$%^&*() all was well.Somebody should mention that when talking about ExFat. Does anyone have a good link to reference?Thanks
- Always format hard disk as EXFAT in mac. Read/Write both in Mac and Windows :)
- 'Always format hard disk as EXFAT in mac. Read/Write both in Mac and Windows :)'Always and never are too terms not often used in IT. There are several situations where a Mac drive should be formatted in HFS+, but if you don't that then there's no point in explaining it to you. You can look it up if you care.
- Typos, sorry.Always and never are two terms not often used in IT. There are several situations where a Mac drive should be formatted in HFS+, but if you don't know that then there's no point in explaining it to you. You can look it up if you care to.
- 4GB filesize limitation.Have not had success with HFS+. It randomly stops working, and I have to reinstall. Going to try MacDrive.
- Wiz,Exfat does NOT have any limitation in file size.Fat 32 DOES have 4GB limitation.You are getting the two confused.
- i had a mac but reverted to windows after my board died installed a software not quite sure i think it was paragon hfs works fine i didnt need to format i still use the drive in mac format
- Palu, installing the filesystem drivers that come with bootcamp on a non Apple computer is possible, I did it a few months ago to get files off an old hard drive.It was read only, but that was good enough for what I wanted to do.
- I have a imac with bootcamp, so my win partition reads mac drives correctlyThis article comes in handy, if i ever need to go back to a windows machine full time.Always had the idea you could install the bootcamp drivers on a non-apple branded pc, but doesnt look like its a possibility. Shake, would have been perfect :)