My daughter says only an external drive formatted as EXFAT can have PC files (ie, all types files created on a PC) recognized on today’s Macs and vice versa. Other formats will prevent file recognition by one or the other. Is this correct? And, how come my thumb drive with a Word 365 file (created on a PC) work just fine on a Mac? Is the thumb drive a different animal with different needs that are less complex than an external drive?
exFAT has superceded FAT32 (and FAT) because it allows for larger files sizes, all are easy to read with any OS. PC, Mac, and Linux have their own filesystems, and aren’t really designed to write to the other systems (may be read only at best) but there are various programs you can use to overcome this, with variable efficacy.
99% of thumb drives sold will come preformatted FAT32 or exFAT (I think the former is still more common), so it doesn’t matter which computer created the document.
And yes, OSes have more needs that FAT formats can’t support. External drives are meant to hold data not run programs for the most part, so compatibility takes precedence, but you can format one NTFS if you really want to.
Macs can read from NTFS drives, and for those of us who install 3rd party drivers, can write to them as well. (I use Tuxera)
AHunter3, thanks for your reply. Can you put this is simple terms? Is NTFS a brand or a format?
NTFS is a format — NT as in “Windows NT” and FS as in “file system”. It’s the default format that Windows has used since the demise of Windows ME about 21 years ago. All Microsoft operating systems of the modern era use it, require it for any bootable devices, etc.
So with Tuxera, you can attach a drive, write to it from the Mac, then attach it to a PC and read from and write to it there as well.
I’m confused by your reply. Maybe I should explain. I just want to move files (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, Paint, JPEG, and GIF) from a PC to a new Mac (Monterey OS). Ideally, It’d be great if I can go both ways (PC to Mac and back) if necessary. My daughter found she could only do this with EXFAT. (She’s out of town for awhile, and I don’t want to bug her.) And, my son moved a Word doc from my PC to a memory stick to his MAC to print for me. This worked seamlessly. Ultimately, I guess I want to know the pitfalls before I buy either a Seagate 1TB or 2Tb HDD or maybe SSD external drive.
Those drives can all be reformatted so it doesn’t really matter what they come with in the first place. FAT32 or preferably exFAT are what you’d need for transferring files, it’s just that those formats are quite slow compared to the native formats (NTFS for Windows, HFS+ or APFS for Mac). Many thumb drives have terrible write performance even if they have ok read performance. With an SSD you could run into problems formatting with FAT because there are size limitations.
Most have come preformatted with FAT32, but most things support exFAT now so just go with that. Drives can be easily reformatted. The limitation is that FAT32 doesn’t support SINGLE files > about 4 GB. Most people it doesn’t matter, but if you have e.g. DVD dumps (4.7 GB) you’ll need to figure something else out.
The main reason you’d put an external drive on a PC or Mac specific format is if it never leaves the system it’s connected to.
In other words, reformat to exFAT if it’s not, this will destroy all data on the drive unless you move it off and then back on after.
I have to admit it sounds like my daughter is partly mistaken. She bought an external hard drive and instantly connected it to her Mac. Then, she tried to use it on her PC. From what I’ve recently read, she should have connected to her PC first to move files from her PC to her Mac without a problem. That was her goal. {She was just overzealous.) And, if that’s the correct way to do it, that’s good enough for me. Others’ thoughts on this?