I just purchased a new Mac Laptop and also a WB element. I need to fomat my WB portable drive so I can backup pictures my Mac but I want to be able to also see them on my Destop which is a Windows computer. I will only be viewing them on the desktop. Can anyone help me with this, please.
To be readable and writable on both, you need to format it in either FAT32 or exFAT format - see this article for some details. Note that this will impose a maximum file size limit on the files that can be stored on the drive.
A Mac can also read an NTFS-formatted drive natively, but can’t write to it. There are hacks to do that (search for “NTFS for Mac” to see a few pages on the subject, but there are tales of things going wrong if not done correctly), or alternatively software options like Paragon or Tuxera which will also allow read/write access to an NTFS formatted drive. Both are paid-for software options if I remember correctly, but I don’t have a Mac myself so cannot comment on how effective either are.
