Transferring data from Windows to external drive, then Mac

Hiya, I am a computer engineer, with very little experience of Macs, as I always use Seagate external drives to back up data stored on my Windows systems.
I have a client whose daughter has just got a Mac and he wants me to transfer the data onto the brand new Seagate external drive he has left for me, and then she can transfer the data to her Mac.
What things would I have to do differently to make the Windows files be compatible for the Mac? (Basically, if I back up a .doc or a .mp3 file onto the external drive, my client's daughter can read it on the Mac?)
I have only got the Windows laptop here, and not the Mac.

 

If the drive is formatted for Windows, if not then you'll need
1) reformat it NTFS - then she can only read from it
2) you'll need HFS for Windows - http://www.paragon-software.com/home/hfs-windows/ to copy file to it.

the other way around - it is NTFS and she wants to read & write
1) reformat it HFS (after copying the files off)
2) "Because in order to create, delete or modify any files on Windows NTFS drives you need Paragon NTFS for Mac® "
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/

 

If you format the drive as exFAT you should be able to read/write with the Mac or PC at your leisure. The only caveats are it won't work if OSX is Leopard or earlier and make sure you format the drive using Windows.

 

Do not use paragon or any mac software to write to a mac hfs partition, you will sooner or later loose data and have issues. If its a on time transfer ntfs is readable on osx, but not writable, if its a back and forth then fat32/exfat would work for you.

 

This is how I would go with it.

Use exFat and be done with it, though I've used OS X to format exFat without any issues myself.

 

Thankyou people.
I have formatted it using ex-FAT. There is software on the Seagate website to allow Mac to read the NTFS format but I don't need to worry about that now! The only thing is I forgot to copy the files to another location before formatting, so the backup programmes are gone, but I guess it is just a question of downloading them and installing them on the backup drive?