How can I share an external hard drive between a Mac and a PC?

How can I share an external hard drive between a Mac and a PC? How should I format my hard drive for use on both a Mac and a PC? Is there any way I can also use Time Machine with this drive?
Asked by: Guest \| Views: 340

Total answers/comments: 3

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bert [Entry]

"Format HFS+, use as time machine. On your Windows system, install non-free MacDrive and you can read it. http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/

We do this here for some of the drives that arrive to us from external vendors that are all in HFS format (and some windows people need to read it).

Or, you can just share it from your Mac over your home LAN (not exactly that useful, but..)"

bert [Entry]

Formatting as FAT32 will let both your PC and your Mac read from and write to the disk. If you plan to directly connect the disk to your Mac, Time Machine will only work on it if it's formatted as an HFS+ volume (which Windows can't read without installing some third-party HFS+ driver software).

bert [Entry]

Go with HFS+. Snow Leopard is including new Windows drivers for Boot Camp that include read & possibly write support for HFS+ volumes in Windows.