Is Paragon for me and my ext hard drive

[kathie1404]

I have a 1TB external hard drive with data transferred from a windows pc.
I just bought my first macbook and discovered that even though I could transfer files from ext drive to mac I can't transfer files from mac to ext drive as it is not formatted for mac.
I wanted to use the drive to back up mac using time machine and save certain files.. Should I buy paragon so it will handle both mac and windows files? or buy a separate hard drive for my mac back up?
Could you reply in simple terms as I'm not very technical! thanks

[Macman45]

You don't need third party software. What you need to do is create a Mac partition on the drive in question. To do this, connect it to the Mac, open disk utility and create a Mac partition of appropriate size for your Backups...If you are low on space it might be better to buy a cheap external for Time Machine though.

[kathie1404]

Will the data that's on there already be safe though?

[Macman45]

Originally Posted by kathie1404

Will the data that's on there already be safe though?

Yes, as long as you don't erase the drive.