Hello, i have bought the toshiba canvio 1tb (Mac) it works fine with the mac but will not work when i try to use on my HP desk

[markfletch]

Toshiba hard drive

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

Windows cannot read a hard drive that's been formatted for using on a Mac.
Mac uses a proprietary disk format which a Windows PC doesn't understood.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey markfletch. @Phillip Corcoran is right and has explained everything perfectly. I'd like to add just one thing. If you want to use the external drive with both PC and Mac, the you should reformat it with the exFAT file system. It is natively supported by both Windows and Max OS x, so you'll be able to read/write with both operating systems.
Just remember to backup your files before (and if) you decide to reformat the drive.

Hope that helps.
Boogieman_WD

 

[markfletch]

Thanks guys, I bought it on the pretence I could just plug in and go, as with my last hard drive, not a problem I'll reformat tonight,

Just a quick one, I could also play films and music through my TV with my old hard drive, will I be able to do this after reformatting??

 

[fudoka711]

I'm not sure you'll be able to - you'll just have to try and see. Most tv's I know of do not support it. But I agree that you'll need to format your hdd in the exFAT format to be able to use it on a mac and pc.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Thanks guys, I bought it on the pretence I could just plug in and go, as with my last hard drive, not a problem I'll reformat tonight,

Just a quick one, I could also play films and music through my TV with my old hard drive, will I be able to do this after reformatting??

Just as @fudoka711 stated, chances are that it won't be recognized by the TV. Usually older TVs support FAT32 and newer both FAT32 and NTFS. Windows supports both read and write with the NTFS file system and Mac OS x supports only read with the same file system, which means that you can write and modify files on Windows, but with Mac OS x you can only copy from the drive and not the other way around. But I know that there is some sort of 3rd party software which allows Mac OS x users to both read and write on NTFS file system. So if your TV supports NTFS, this might be an option, but you'll have to look into it a bit more on the web, because I'm not to familiar with this software.