What external Hard Drive for Mac and PC Both - iMac 2011 High Sierra, Windows 10

[kstars]

If I get an SSD to take data from a windows PC to my iMac, is there anything I should know? Formatting? Cross platform? plug and play? (probably not). I have only worked with Seagate drives meant for both pc and mac. I needed to download my huge lot of dropbox files onto my PC since my mac is slooooow. Now I need to bring it to access on my mac, and then delete info from PC since I want it to be clean.

Thanks.

 

[SecuritySteve]

Just make sure the drive is formatted as FAT and you should be fine using the drive between Windows and macOS.

 

[kstars]

Just make sure the drive is formatted as FAT and you should be fine using the drive between Windows and macOS.

Thank you Security Steve. Is it difficult to format in that setting or otherwise? My son mentioned FAT as well, but does the PC/Mac take me through the formatting process? Also, preferred brand of SSD?

 

[SecuritySteve]

Thank you Security Steve. Is it difficult to format in that setting or otherwise? My son mentioned FAT as well, but does the PC/Mac take me through the formatting process? Also, preferred brand of SSD?

On macOS, it is very simple to format a drive. Simply go to your applications folder -> utilities -> disk utility. Launch that application, select the drive, and click 'erase' at the top. You'll get a window that looks like the one I have posted. Select MS-DOS (FAT) and it will be formatted appropriately. Easy! I prefer Western Digital for HDDs, and OWC for SSDs.