At least further developments ( ) start to look quite interesting – and they should continue, considering China’s efforts to achieve technology independence. Windows 10 autostart chrome.

Photo by Sharon Vaknin/CNET If you need to expand your storage space with an external hard drive and you use both Mac and PC, you'll likely run into a few obstacles. Hard drives advertised as being compatible with Windows and Mac OS may have misled you into thinking you could actually use one hard drive for both computers. You can, but not out of the box. Most external hard drives (HD) are sold in a format called NTFS, which is designed to work with Windows.

If you’re intent is to only read files loaded from a pc from a mac, the standard windows NTFS format should suffice. As the article mentioned, this is one of the common formats in external hard drives. If you want the ability to read and write in both windows and mac, format to the MS-DOS (DAT) format. The best ways to format an external drive for Windows and Mac. Compare the different options for formatting an external hard drive to work with Windows and Mac. And, no: the answer isn't always FAT32.

Macs read and write to a different format, called HFS+. Another format, called FAT32 is compatible with both OS platforms.

Here's a look at how the different HD format types function: FAT32 (File Allocation Table) - Natively read/write FAT32 on Windows and Mac OS X. - Maximum file size: 4GB - Maximum volume size: 2TB NTFS (Windows NT File System) - Natively read/write NTFS on Windows.

- Read-only NTFS on Mac OS X - Native NTFS support can be enabled in Snow Leopard and above but has proven instable. - Maximum file size: 16 TB - Maximum volume size: 256TB HFS+ (Hierarchical File System, aka Mac OS Extended) - Natively read/write HFS+ on Mac OS X - Required for Time Machine - Maximum file size: 8 - Maximum volume size: 8EiB Isn't FAT32 the obvious solution? According to the list above, formatting your hard drive to FAT32 so that you can read and write on either OS seems like the obvious solution.

The video and directions below will guide you through the process, but before you format your HD to FAT32, beware of these drawbacks. • FAT32 offers no security, unlike NTFS, which allows you to set permissions. If your HD gets into the wrong hands, that person will be able to access your data. • The max size for any given file stored on a FAT32-formatted HD is 4GB.

So, for example, if you want to store a 9GB movie, it will be impossible. • In general, FAT32 drives are more susceptible to disk errors.

• It's not a huge issue, but FAT32 is less efficient at storing files. Its large cluster sizes waste disk space, unlike the other HD storage formats. 2:55 If you've considered these issues and would still like to use FAT32, this video will guide you through the process of formatting your HD to FAT32 using a Windows or Mac PC: OK, what are my alternatives to using FAT32? The good news is, it's not FAT32 or nothing. The alternative solutions do require more tinkering, but if you do not want to risk FAT32's lack of security, choose from one of the following alternatives. Option 1: Format to NTFS, and use NTFS-3G to read/write on Mac. If you keep your hard drive's out-of-the-box NTFS format for all the reasons FAT32 displeases, there's a workaround that will allow your Mac to read and write files to the drive.