Hi Alex, No to the APFS being able to be read from a windows machine. Same with mac os x extended.
Best option would be FAT32 or xFAT which both can be written and read from widnows and mac os. The other but there is a price is the paragon software which will allow the mac user to write and read from NTFS file structures. Terri, My personal suggestion if it's possible Would be to connect the drives to another machine probably widnows, Not any thing over the top as the machine with the drives attached is just for the sharing of the drives, Then you would be able to map or share / connect to them from both your mac and windows machines And if they are formatted in fat32 then you'll be able to write to the drives from both windows and mac platforms. -----Original Message----- From: macvisionaries@googlegroups.com <macvisionaries@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Alex Hall Sent: Sunday, 6 May 2018 8:47 AM To: macvisionaries@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Few questions regarding my Mac laptop I can't help with your second question, but I can try to help with the first, about your drives. Any drive is set up using what's called a file system. There are several popular ones out there, some cross-platform and some specific to macOS or Windows. FAT32 or FAT are the usual general-purpose ones used for thumb drives or SD cards. For larger capacities and external hard or solid state drives, NTFS is used with Windows and either APFS or OS X Extended is used for the Mac. Here's the point of all that. The Mac can see and read NTFS drives meant for Windows, and Windows can read OS X Extended drives meant for the Mac. I don't know if Windows can read APFS drives. Importantly, neither system can write to, or change in any way, a drive meant for the other platform. You can't, for instance, put a file onto an NTFS drive using a Mac, but you can copy off of that drive and onto another drive your Mac can fully use. Same for Windows with Mac drives. That's a very, very long way of saying: your Mac should read your Windows drives just fine, and let you copy off them. You just can't write anything to them from the Mac. Sent from my iPhone > On May 5, 2018, at 15:08, Terri Stimmel <icecreamlove...@outlook.com> wrote: > > Hello everyone, > > > I have had my Mac laptop for a while now. It is something I really > want to learn how to use. But I seem to be struggling with it. > > > First of all, can I connect my 2 external hard drives to the mac? > > They are currently connected to my windows laptop, and so I wasn't > sure if they could be connected to the Mac. > > > Also, a while back, I asked about Zoom Text for the Mac, and possibly > using the Mac's magnification. My boyfriend is visually impaired, and > has some useable vision. > > > We tried the command that was recommended. But this just seemed to > turn on and off the bacllight for the keyboard. So I don't know if we > did something wrong. Or if this Mac I have is different, or works differently. > > It's running Yosemitte. > > > Any thoughts are much appreciated. > > > Thank you, > > > Terri > > -- > The following information is important for all members of the Mac Visionaries > list. > > If you have any questions or concerns about the running of this list, or if > you feel that a member's post is inappropriate, please contact the owners or > moderators directly rather than posting on the list itself. > > Your Mac Visionaries list moderator is Mark Taylor. You can reach > mark at: mk...@ucla.edu and your owner is Cara Quinn - you can reach > Cara at caraqu...@caraquinn.com > > The archives for this list can be searched at: > http://www.mail-archive.com/macvisionaries@googlegroups.com/ > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- The following information is important for all members of the Mac Visionaries list. If you have any questions or concerns about the running of this list, or if you feel that a member's post is inappropriate, please contact the owners or moderators directly rather than posting on the list itself. Your Mac Visionaries list moderator is Mark Taylor. You can reach mark at: mk...@ucla.edu and your owner is Cara Quinn - you can reach Cara at caraqu...@caraquinn.com The archives for this list can be searched at: http://www.mail-archive.com/macvisionaries@googlegroups.com/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- The following information is important for all members of the Mac Visionaries list. If you have any questions or concerns about the running of this list, or if you feel that a member's post is inappropriate, please contact the owners or moderators directly rather than posting on the list itself. Your Mac Visionaries list moderator is Mark Taylor. You can reach mark at: mk...@ucla.edu and your owner is Cara Quinn - you can reach Cara at caraqu...@caraquinn.com The archives for this list can be searched at: http://www.mail-archive.com/macvisionaries@googlegroups.com/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
