I bought an M3 Samsung 1T (USB 3.0) portable hard drive but cannot seem to use it on my Mac even though it should be compatible. The Samsung Drive Manager is a .exe file and I cannot seem to get any further. This MacBookPro is my first time using Apple products. Can anyone help?
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M3 Samsung hard drive for Mac ?
- Thread starter chris1234567
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You don't need the Samsung Drive Manager.
Format A Hard Drive Using Disk Utility (which is in your /Applications/Utilities folder)
Choose the appropriate format:
HFS+ (Hierarchical File System, a.k.a. Mac OS Extended (Journaled) Don't use case-sensitive)
- Read/Write HFS+ from native Mac OS X
- Required for Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! backups of Mac OS X system files.
[*]To Read/Write HFS+ from Windows, Install MacDrive
[*]To Read HFS+ (but not Write) from Windows, Install HFSExplorer - Maximum file size: 8EiB
- Maximum volume size: 8EiB
- Mac OS X: Mac OS Extended format (HFS Plus) volume and file limits
- You can use this format if you only use the drive with Mac OS X, or use it for backups of your Mac OS X internal drive, or if you only share it with one Windows PC (with MacDrive installed on the PC)
NTFS (Windows NT File System)
- Read/Write NTFS from native Windows.
- Read only NTFS from native Mac OS X
[*]To Read/Write/Format NTFS from Mac OS X, here are some alternatives:- For Mac OS X 10.4 or later (32 or 64-bit), install Paragon ($19.95) (Best Choice for Lion and Mountain Lion)
- For Mac OS X 10.5 and later, including Lion, FUSE for OS X
- For 32-bit Mac OS X, install NTFS-3G for Mac OS X (free) (does not work in 64-bit mode)
- For 64-bit Snow Leopard, read this: MacFUSE for 64-bit Snow Leopard
- Some have reported problems using Tuxera (approx $36), which is an enhanced version of NTFS-3G with faster performance.
- Native NTFS support can be enabled in Snow Leopard and later versions, but is not advisable, due to instability.
- AirPort Extreme (802.11n) and Time Capsule do not support NTFS
- Maximum file size: 16 TB
- Maximum volume size: 256TB
- You can use this format if you routinely share a drive with multiple Windows systems.
exFAT (FAT64)
- Supported in Mac OS X only in 10.6.5 or later.
- Not all Windows versions support exFAT. See disadvantages.
- exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table)
- AirPort Extreme (802.11n) and Time Capsule do not support exFAT
- Maximum file size: 16 EiB
- Maximum volume size: 64 ZiB
- You can use this format if it is supported by all computers with which you intend to share the drive. See "disadvantages" for details.
FAT32 (File Allocation Table)
- Read/Write FAT32 from both native Windows and native Mac OS X.
[*]Maximum file size: 4GB. - Maximum volume size: 2TB
- You can use this format if you share the drive between Mac OS X and Windows computers and have no files larger than 4GB.
thanks GGJstudios - Very quick response but your response is still too technical for a beginner like me. I found the utilities section to make the changes. I don't use Windows at all, but am still a little unsure which format to choose.
My Mac is one year old and updated to Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5 (11G63).
My Mac is one year old and updated to Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5 (11G63).
I you only want to use the drive in OS X you can just format to Mac OS Extended using Disk Utility. Or for both OS X and Windows, you can format to ExFAT also using Disk Utility. With ExFAT you can read/write from both PC and Mac.
Hi
Thanks for the different formatting options. I reformatted by Samsung M3 so that it would read/write on my mac, however this was so I could copy all my files on to it. I actually want to use my external HDD with my other windows laptop.
How do I download or activate FAT32 so that I can use my drive on both windows and mac?
Plug in the drive and start Disk Utility. Then select the drive and go to the erase tab in Disk Utility. Select ExFAT in the drop down list on the right side and below that name the drive whatever you want. Then click the erase button. Of course any data on there will be erased.
It will look like this in Disk Utility.
Plug in the drive and start Disk Utility. Then select the drive and go to the erase tab in Disk Utility. Select ExFAT in the drop down list on the right side and below that name the drive whatever you want. Then click the erase button. Of course any data on there will be erased.
It will look like this in Disk Utility.
![Pv1snyP.png]()
thanks so much!
Sorry to bump this very old thread ... but just bought one of these myself.
I've moved over from PCs - but I'm guessing occasionally I might want to load my external hard drive on to a PC now and again.
So rather than go for HFS+....should I go for fat32? Are there any drawbacks to fat32 for my mac external drive? Or shall I just go for mac seeing as I now have a mac and worry about it later
I'm avoiding NTFS - as I don't want to buy that Paragon driver.
I've moved over from PCs - but I'm guessing occasionally I might want to load my external hard drive on to a PC now and again.
So rather than go for HFS+....should I go for fat32? Are there any drawbacks to fat32 for my mac external drive? Or shall I just go for mac seeing as I now have a mac and worry about it later
I'm avoiding NTFS - as I don't want to buy that Paragon driver.
Read the 2nd post of this thread for formatting choices, as well as the pros and cons of each. That will answer your question.
Thanks - but obviously I had seen that post. I was just seeking some opinions. No worries.
Sorry to bump this very old thread ... but just bought one of these myself.
I've moved over from PCs - but I'm guessing occasionally I might want to load my external hard drive on to a PC now and again.
So rather than go for HFS+....should I go for fat32? Are there any drawbacks to fat32 for my mac external drive? Or shall I just go for mac seeing as I now have a mac and worry about it later
I'm avoiding NTFS - as I don't want to buy that Paragon driver.
The biggest drawback of FAT32 is the 2GB file size limitation. I personally find that the limitation makes the format outdated and almost unusable because most of the files you would be working with could easily exceed 2GB, especially in the age of 4 and 6TB (6000GB) hard drives. If you still want the Windows compatibility, go for exFAT. Another option is partitioning the hard drive to split it in half, so that you can use it to transfer files between your Mac and PC, and still have an HFS+ partition to use as a TimeMachine.
Fat32 size limit is 4GB not 2GB (in apple terms that is 4.29GB due to the way apple exaggerates disk sizes
)ExFAT is buggy as hell - you can expect to lose data. Just google "apple exfat corrupted". For me HFS+ is out as applehfs.sys windows driver is incompatible with Windows 10 and I'm not paying for Paragon.
Third party OSX drivers that allow NTFS write access are a bit dodgy so for me there isn't a good safe solution for sharing large files. So I don't - I duplicate them.
I apologize for my mistake, I had remembered that because of the 4GB limitation that we used to split files into 2GB or 3GB chunks to store them.
I haven't had much luck with NTFS drives on mac. I was running Tuxera NTFS and one day it decided that it didn't want to mount my drives, but wouldn't repair them either. I had to boot into Windows and move everything around and reformat as exFAT for both Mac and Windows through bootcamp to read and write. At the same time, I couldn't get Windows to read and write to HFS+ drives consistently without HFS+Explorer, and that becomes a pain. The best alternative that I've found, and what I use, is a file server. It could be running Windows or Linux, and it holds all your hard drives and allows you to access them on all network connected computers. It gets rid of the compatibility due to file system because the server will control read and write to the drive.
exFAT is the route that worked best for me, but your results may differ. I did look at the corruption issues, but running fsck in the terminal was able to get most people back up and running.
I haven't had much luck with NTFS drives on mac. I was running Tuxera NTFS and one day it decided that it didn't want to mount my drives, but wouldn't repair them either. I had to boot into Windows and move everything around and reformat as exFAT for both Mac and Windows through bootcamp to read and write. At the same time, I couldn't get Windows to read and write to HFS+ drives consistently without HFS+Explorer, and that becomes a pain. The best alternative that I've found, and what I use, is a file server. It could be running Windows or Linux, and it holds all your hard drives and allows you to access them on all network connected computers. It gets rid of the compatibility due to file system because the server will control read and write to the drive.
exFAT is the route that worked best for me, but your results may differ. I did look at the corruption issues, but running fsck in the terminal was able to get most people back up and running.
Hi Chogue23,
Sorry to resurrect this old thread but I was wondering if you would be able to advise me how I can partition my hard drive so that I can use it to transfer my files between MAC and PC as you mentioned?
I am a real technical novice so an guidance you could give me would be really appreciated! Thank you!