Saving files from mac AND pc to external hard drive

sotu

I want to save files from two different machines on one external hard drive.

I have loaded all the pc documents onto my Seagate hard drive and the mac can see them and open them. I have spare space and want to load mac files onto the hard drive too but the mac won't let me. I can only read files.

How can it be done? It must be easy to do. The drive was originally formatted on the pc if that info is of any use.
Thank you.

sotu

Googling, it looks like I need to reformat to exFat but can files be over 4 GB with exFat32 as opposed to Fat32 before I start?

RichL74

This comes highly recommended although involves spending money.

http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/

sotu

Thank you.
For there to be a market to sell software, I guess exFAT32 can't be the way to go then but I don't understand why. That looked like the obvious free solution when I did a quick google.

Fosterdog

It was a year ago that I did this but I just downloaded a plugin called NTFS-3G and it has allowed me to read and write to an NTFS hard drive to backup both PC and mac.

I'll go see if I can find a link for you

ETA:

Here is the link for it
http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/

I've just looked into it a bit and it's not the best one out there (Paragon is the best but a paid one) and some people have had issues with it particularly on Lion or Mountain Lion. Maybe mine is fine because I started with Snow Leopard and installed it on that then upgraded to Lion and ML so it still works for me with no problems at all.

sotu

Many thanks for offering your assistance and giving me pointers. To anyone else owning Seagate with a similar issue, you can download Paragon for free from Seagate website:
w ww.seagate.com/support/external-hard-drives/portable-hard-drives/goflex/ntfs-driver-for-mac-os-master-dl/