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I have a PC running Windows 10 and a Mac with the latest version of macOS. How can I format two partitions in my hard drive so that I have one for Mac and one for PC?

I tried going to Mac:

  • Erase the HD
  • create 1 partition 'macos journal file system'
  • create 1 partition 'exFAT'

But when I connect that HD to my Windows 10 machine, it can't see my HD or my partition.

And I also tried going to PC:

  • Erase the volumes of the HD
  • create 1 partition 'exFAT'
  • create 1 partition 'NTFS'

But when I go to macOS, I can't erase the 'exFAT' and create a 'macos journal file system' for it.

Basically, I want 2 partitions in my hard drive:

  • 1 macos journal file system
  • 1 windows NTFS
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4 Answers 4

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I've just did the same you want, but with the second partition for Linux. What I did was:

  • Run a Linux Live USB (any distro does good job, but I recomend SliTaz Gnu/linux)
  • Create with Gparted a full extended partition (Go Device > Creat Partition Table > Extended Partition)
  • From the extended partition, yo can create as many logical patitions you need, and withthe specific filesystem.

Once you start te osx install guide, go to Disk Utility and select the partition, erase it selecting the Mac os puls w/register and name it as you please. And that's all I did, hope you can make it!

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You refer to connecting the disk. Is this an external disk that you're moving between a Mac and a Windows PC? If so, it's conceivable that Windows is refusing to access anything beyond the first partition on the disk. This is definitely how Windows treats USB flash drives, but I'm not sure if it treats removable hard disks in the same way. If so, at least part of the solution would be to put the Windows partition first on the disk. For the rest of my answer, I'll assume you're talking about a removable disk that you're moving between two computers.

Another potential issue is that OS X partitioning software (at least, as of a year or two ago; I haven't checked recently) creates a hybrid MBR if you put a FAT or exFAT filesystem on a partition. Hybrid MBRs are ugly and dangerous. Although the hybrid MBR should work OK with your Windows system, it's conceivable that it won't, or it might be interacting badly with a removable disk, so you might want to avoid it.

One rule of thumb in the past was to use partitioning tools in a given OS to create partitions for that OS. You might want to employ that same rule here:

  1. Using whatever software you like, erase all the partitions from the disk.
  2. Using Windows tools, create an NTFS partition for Windows at the start of the disk, leaving the rest of the disk unpartitioned.
  3. Test the NTFS partition in Windows, but don't fill it with data just yet. Leave at least one test file on it, though.
  4. Move the disk to your Mac and use the Mac's partitioning software to create an HFS+ partition in the unpartitioned space on the disk.
  5. Test the HFS+ partition. Leave at least one test file on it, but don't fill it with data.
  6. Move the disk back to the Windows system and see if you can still access it and read the test file(s) you put on the NTFS partition. If you can....
  7. Move it back to the Mac and verify that you can still read the HFS+ partition and the file(s) it contains.

At this point, if everything still works, you should be able to begin using the disk as you'd intended.

I'll conclude by saying that stereohisteria's suggestion of using GParted in a Linux emergency disk is a good alternative, provided you're comfortable enough with Linux, or with a variety of OSes in general, to try that approach. Linux partitioning tools tend to work better in multi-OS environments than do the tools for many other OSes.

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Why not format it NTFS and use a NTFS driver for OSX like the free NTFS3g or Paragon NTFS for mac which is not too expensive and sometimes are given away for free in promotions.

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Switch the partitions. (In Windows, make the first partition NTFS and the 2nd partition ExFat.)

Then on Mac, reformat the ExFat partition to Mac (Journaled) or whatever you want.

I’m on Mac Mojave. It wouldn’t let me partition the unallocated part of a drive that was partitioned in Windows. But when I formatted both partitions as ExFat in Windows, I was able to reformat the 2nd partition on the Mac as Journaled. (I still wasn’t able to repartition, tho.)

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