External HD on Windows and Mac
Q: How can I use an external hard drive on both my PC and Mac?
If you wish to be able to use an external hard drive containing your music on both Windows PC's and Apple Mac computers you will need to format the drive so that both operating systems can read and write to it.
Windows cannot access native Mac formatted drives.
Mac can natively read Windows NTFS formatted drives but cannot write to them, so any changes you make to your database (Cue points, BPM, comments, etc.) will be lost when you exit the software.
To be able to use it on both Windows PC's and Mac, you will need to format the drive using either exFAT or FAT32 format.
[*] Copy your music collection and VirtualDJ Local Database back to the reformatted external drive.
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FAQ Knowledge Database
If you wish to be able to use an external hard drive containing your music on both Windows PC's and Apple Mac computers you will need to format the drive so that both operating systems can read and write to it.
Windows cannot access native Mac formatted drives.
Mac can natively read Windows NTFS formatted drives but cannot write to them, so any changes you make to your database (Cue points, BPM, comments, etc.) will be lost when you exit the software.
To be able to use it on both Windows PC's and Mac, you will need to format the drive using either exFAT or FAT32 format.
- First, make a full backup of your music and VirtualDJ Local Database that's stored on the drive (You should be doing this regularly as a matter of course - Please see: Backup your music collection.)
- Once you have done this, you will need to reformat the drive.
[list] - On Windows, go to Computer then right-click on the external drive and choose Format. Choose either exFAT or FAT32 for the File system and then click Start.
- On Mac, go to Applications Utilities Disk Utility and click on the external drive. Click on the Erase tab. Choose MS DOS (FAT) for the Volume Format and click on the Erase button.
[*] Copy your music collection and VirtualDJ Local Database back to the reformatted external drive.
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