Can HDD's be compatible with both MacOS & Win10?

[asiancorruption]

I have a 2015 Macbook pro base that I will be taking to college for a sys analyst program. I'm planning to have MacOs and windows run on the SSD in my computer, and have bigger files and projects transfered onto the HDD. From my understanding, WIndows and Mac use a different filesystem, and the hard drives I am looking at have to be reformatted to run on MacOS. Question is, are there drives out there that can interact with each OS and store files (im not expecting to open dmg files on WIndows ) or is the drive going to be only compatible with one os? I was planning to buy a new NVME SSD for my Mac, but since they're either sold by a 3rd party or on Ebay, their questionable integrity and prohibitive pricing make don't make that an option  

[paddy-stone]

According to a quick google search mac are compatible in both nfs and fat32.. depedns on what you want to do though, so for instance the mac can have one filesystem partition for it's OS, same with windows and windows use nfs... then for data you want to share between both drives would be best to keep on a separate partition either in fat32 or nfs. Then if you have to re-install OS at all you won't lose your files.

[Creed1]

Just install MacOS then install windows via bootcamp. Then install a NTFS driver for MacOS so you can access your windows files from mac os. 

 

Edit: Here is the software

 

http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/item/ntfs-driver-for-mac-os-master-dl/

Edited August 24, 2017 by CmzPlusHardware

[asiancorruption]

6 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

According to a quick google search mac are compatible in both nfs and fat32.. depedns on what you want to do though, so for instance the mac can have one filesystem partition for it's OS, same with windows and windows use nfs... then for data you want to share between both drives would be best to keep on a separate partition either in fat32 or nfs. Then if you have to re-install OS at all you won't lose your files.

do you think 30-40ish GB of storage is sufficient to run Win10? I know you need 20Gb for the bare minimum, just curious if performance would improve if Windows had more available storage to utilize. 

[Creed1]

7 minutes ago, asiancorruption said:

do you think 30-40ish GB of storage is sufficient to run Win10? I know you need 20Gb for the bare minimum, just curious if performance would improve if Windows had more available storage to utilize. 

I haven't noticed any issues with mine. Just make sure you have enough room for drivers and your applications. Also remember windows updates and you may need to clear your temp files once in a while to save space

[paddy-stone]

8 minutes ago, asiancorruption said:

do you think 30-40ish GB of storage is sufficient to run Win10? I know you need 20Gb for the bare minimum, just curious if performance would improve if Windows had more available storage to utilize. 

At this current time my windows + apps comes out to 68GB, although it does have a VM in there too, I would allow around 80 personally unless you are not going to use it for much or offload progs etc to a HDD instead.

[asiancorruption]

Just now, paddy-stone said:

At this current time my windows + apps comes out to 68GB, although it does have a VM in there too, I would allow around 80 personally unless you are not going to use it for much or offload progs etc to a HDD instead.

i have a 128gb ssd, the most I can free up reasonably is probably 50gb tops. The HDD is where i'll offload any games, and depending on how much space I have left, a lot of the files or programs ill be using for school. Would a portable SSD be or suited to what I am trying to do? I'm having a hard time justifying the cost considering I still have to buy a copy of Windows off reddit. 

[ProjectBox153]

You don't need any specific drive to use with both MacOS and Windows. MacOS will read NTFS natively, and with a free add-on, can write as well. It's the part about reading HFS+ on Windows you should be worried about. 

[paddy-stone]

Just now, asiancorruption said:

i have a 128gb ssd, the most I can free up reasonably is probably 50gb tops. The HDD is where i'll offload any games, and depending on how much space I have left, a lot of the files or programs ill be using for school. Would a portable SSD be or suited to what I am trying to do? I'm having a hard time justifying the cost considering I still have to buy a copy of Windows off reddit. 

If that's all the space you have then go with that, you'll just have to be mindful of where you save files etc.. you should definitely use the windows storage settings to set your default save locations so you don't fill up the SSD with un-neeeded crap. Not sure about the portable SSD, I wouldn't personally use it for boot drive... just use it for progs/files etc if you need to. For OS only 50GB should be OK, as I said just be careful with what you're putting on it or you might come to a time when you have to shuffle data around.

[asiancorruption]

Just now, Jamiec1130 said:

You don't need any specific drive to use with both MacOS and Windows. MacOS will read NTFS natively, and with a free add-on, can write as well. It's the part about reading HFS+ on Windows you should be worried about. 

The files I'm planning to save on windows will be windows specific for programs I'll be using at school. If I'm just saving stuff that won't fit onto the SSD on my computer, and that i won't be trying to access on the other OS, will I be fine? All I'm trying to do is to make my Mac be compatible with a windows-only college course, Through bootcamp and portable storage. 

[ProjectBox153]

1 minute ago, asiancorruption said:

The files I'm planning to save on windows will be windows specific for programs I'll be using at school. If I'm just saving stuff that won't fit onto the SSD on my computer, and that i won't be trying to access on the other OS, will I be fine? All I'm trying to do is to make my Mac be compatible with a windows-only college course, Through bootcamp and portable storage. 

From MacOS you will be able to get to your Windows files, but from Windows you'll need a special program to get to your MacOS files. Make sense?

[asiancorruption]

Just now, paddy-stone said:

If that's all the space you have then go with that, you'll just have to be mindful of where you save files etc.. you should definitely use the windows storage settings to set your default save locations so you don't fill up the SSD with un-neeeded crap. Not sure about the portable SSD, I wouldn't personally use it for boot drive... just use it for progs/files etc if you need to. For OS only 50GB should be OK, as I said just be careful with what you're putting on it or you might come to a time when you have to shuffle data around.

The external drive, regardless if i go for a mech or SSD, are going to be used exclusively for file storage. the Mac drive will boot both WIn10 & MacOS. I won't have a problem accessing files from an external drive to use on my computer will I? I'm still kind of in the dark as to how well the drive and the computer will interact with each other, and the problems I may face.    

[asiancorruption]

1 minute ago, Jamiec1130 said:

From MacOS you will be able to get to your Windows files, but from Windows you'll need a special program to get to your MacOS files. Make sense?

yeah, thanks for simplifying that.

[paddy-stone]

2 hours ago, asiancorruption said:

The external drive, regardless if i go for a mech or SSD, are going to be used exclusively for file storage. the Mac drive will boot both WIn10 & MacOS. I won't have a problem accessing files from an external drive to use on my computer will I? I'm still kind of in the dark as to how well the drive and the computer will interact with each other, and the problems I may face.    

Yeah, that's what I was trying to say, maybe I didn't explain it well enough.

 

What I mean is you will have to partition the boot drive, so that windows has it's partition and mac has it's own partition... just for the OS if you wish. Files can be stored on any drive and be accessible by both windows OS and mac OS as long as the partition/drive is in fat32 or nfs file system type, so an external SSD/HDD formatted to either of those can be used on either system for file retrieval and storage. The interface shouldn't be a problem at all, AFAIK as I'm not a mac user, macs use usb 2.0/3.0/3.1 etc same as windows... windows 10 doesn't have nearly as many problems with USB drives in my experience, even older PCs that I use for occassional testing and such used to have problems with usb 3.0 and drivers all the time, now in win 10 no problems at all. All my newer equipment I have not had a problem with USB on any of them.