Why I shouldn't connect a hard drive to two computers at the same time while formatting it?

WD External Drives External Drives for PC
1

I found this warning here:

There’s a warning that I should not attempt to connect a hard drive to two computers at the same time. Why is this warning here? External hard drives can’t be connected to multiple computers at all, so is this a weird warning?

Anyway, why should I not attempt to connect a hard drive to two computers? I know it’s data loss, but can someone (preferably a WD representative) explain this?

2

Well, you’d be surprised. People have tried to use funky, non-compliant USB switches to do that.

As long as the format is compatible with both computers, you can most certainly share a drive between them without data loss – just not simultaneously… :slight_smile:

3

It says “This allows to be used on both Windows and Mac”, it does not say “at the same time”. There is no warning posted.
The EXFat and FAT32 format allows you to move the drive from Windows to Mac to transfer data.

4

There is this:

Critical: Never attempt to connect any external drive to multiple computers at the same time. This could quickly damage the drive’s partition and corrupt the data on the drive.

1 Like
5

My apologies, not sure how I missed that. You are correct.