You don't need a special external hard drive for Mac, but it can improve your performance and let you do a few special things if you have one. Previously we have written an article external hard drive buying guide which will also help you find an external hard drive for Mac, but here we will solely focus on Mac buyers.
An External Hard Drive For Mac Filesystems
Modern Macs use the Hierarchical FileSystem Plus (HFS+). This is also the same filesystem found on other Apple devices, such as the iPod. But most other computer manufacturers don't support this filesystem.
Hard Drive Formatting. OS X, Windows, and Linux all use different hard drive formatting for normal system operations. A hard drive format refers to how the operating system stores the data on the drive. There are three common filesystems that are used today: HFS+, NTFS, and FAT32. Mac OS X uses HFS+, Windows uses NTFS and used to use FAT32. Modern external hard drives for Mac comes with encryption capabilities that will add a secure layer of protection to your data. Besides security, you can always consider getting an external hard drive with extra features. Lina player mac. Some of the features you should be looking ranges from Wi-Fi connectivity to advanced hardware encryption features.
Those who are in need of more MAC hard drive can consider having the 3TB one. Packed with so many interesting features, this Time Capsule is not comparable with any other storage devices. With high-speed wireless connectivity of dual-band 802.11ac wi-fi, this hard drive can make many things done in just 1 minute. While in a Windows desktop you can increase storage space by simply adding an additional internal hard drive, you can't do that with a Mac. Hence, if you need extra storage capacity, you need to get an external hard drive. Expand the hard drive of your Mac with this the 8GB on this external hard drive. Transfer data fast via the USB 3.0 supported. The installation process is as simple as connecting the power adapter and USB cable and you can start working. As a Mac user, you will need to reformat it. Do this easily by following the application guide provided.
Apple External Hard Drive
For example, if instead of an external hard drive for Mac you buy a drive for Windows, you'll get a File Allocation Table (FAT) filesystem or, more rarely, a New Technology FileSystem (NTFS).
External hard drives mostly use FAT because it's compatible with Windows, Mac, Linux, and many mobile devices. But FAT has a few problems which make it less than ideal for Mac users.
Why You Want An External Hard Drive For Mac Only
The FAT filesystem is old—nearly 30 years old, which is ancient in the computer technology world. It's extremely inefficient compared to Mac's own HFS+ or Windows's NTFS and—worse—it lacks several of the features later filesystems added to prevent file corruption.[easyazon-image align='right' asin='B008R7EXD8″ locale='us' height='250″ src='http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31g5hp7odgL.jpg' width='250″]
If you unplug an external hard drive for Mac using the FAT filesystem without unmounting it first, it could corrupt the entire filesystem, making the whole drive unusable without special tools.
If you do the same thing with an HFS+ drive, the worst that would happen is that you'd lose any files you saved on it recently.
How To Find An External Hard Drive For Mac
Search product listings for HFS+ to find external hard drives for Mac. As of this writing, there are over 200 product listings on Amazon, so you should have no problem finding one.
Make sure the product listing says it's pre-formatted with HFS+ and not that it 'supports HFS+'.
If all else fails and you can't find a drive that meets your needs, you can buy an FAT-formatted drive and reformat it with HFS+ on your Mac. It will only take a few minutes even on a large drive—but, be warned, you'll lose all of the data on the drive when you format it.
Do Macs Need Special External Hard Drives Disk
As with most Apple-compatible products, you can often save some money by buying a Windows-compatible drive and using the formatting technique to make it an external hard drive for Mac.
