Wanting to know what to do to be able to get my hard drive to work on PC and Mac

[applemacb]

Hi,
I recently bought a 2TB western digital external hard drive. I want to transfer files from mac (my computer) onto the hard drive and from pc onto the hard drive and be able to plug it into my tv. currently, the tv doesn't recognise it at all. Just wondering what I have to buy/dowload or whatever to get it to work. I've done some reading and researching but I still don't really understand what I should do for my own specific situation. And I want to transfer files bigger than 4GB because I saw somewhere that it isn't possible with some hard drives. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks so much

 

[GimmeSlack12]

What formats does your TV recognize? What TV is it? How are you connecting the HDD to the TV?

I'm 99% sure you don't need to buy anything else.

 

[applemacb]

my friends plug theirs in and they are seagate, wd and one that is fairly similar to mine but i think it uses PC. the tv is chang hong but i want it to work on a samsung smart tv also. connecting it with the usb cord that it came with...

 

[GimmeSlack12]

my friends plug theirs in and they are seagate, wd and one that is fairly similar to mine but i think it uses PC. the tv is chang hong but i want it to work on a samsung smart tv also. connecting it with the usb cord that it came with...

That's not really answering my questions. Seagate and Western Digital (WD) are the brands of the drives. This means nothing.

What exact TV is it? I've never heard of Chang Hong before (I assume you're not in the US). You really just need to figure out what format (FAT32, NTFS, HFS+, etc.) that your TV will recognize and try one of those formats. If you aren't sure then at least go try a few different formats using Disk Utility.

EDIT: If your friends' drives work then perhaps ask them for help.

 

[takeshi74]

Or look at how their drives are formatted.

I've done some reading and researching but I still don't really understand what I should do for my own specific situation.

You're being too specific in your searches. It's the same process regardless of the specifics: you need to find the format that is supported by all the devices that you want to use the drive with. Check the manuals.