BestCrypt Volume Encryption for Windows is compatible with Mac version of the software. It means that disk volume encrypted on one platform can be accessed on another supported platform. However, the operating systems are still different and you should be aware of the differences to avoid general pitfalls.
The article discusses a particular case of disk volume located on a removable device (USB or external HD) that the user would like to encrypt in Windows and then access on Mac computer.
File System Compatibility
Although BestCrypt Volume Encryption for Mac will mount and open your volume encrypted in Windows, there may be an issue with the file system your volume is formatted with.
Default file system on Windows is NTFS, but Mac OS X does not support writing to NTFS volumes. It means that you will be able to mount your NTFS volume on Mac, but the operating system will provide not full but read-only access to the volume.
To avoid the problem, choose either the FAT32 or the ExFAT file system for removable disk volumes you are going to use on both Windows and Mac platforms, or install a third-party support for writing to NTFS volumes on Mac. The following are examples of such third-party software:
- NTFS-3G Free NTFS-3G utility and file-system driver
- Tuxera NTFS Commercial NTFS implementation that can format new volumes in NTFS and mount existing ones for writing
The same considerations concerns also removable devices formatted in Mac. Mac OS will allow you formatting a volume with the HFS file system, which is not supported in Windows. In Windows you will not be able to access HFS formatted volume even for reading without installing third-party HFS implementation.