Want to use one external drive for both your Windows PC and your Mac machine? One hurdle you'll face is that, by default, these platforms use different filesystems. Windows uses NTFS while Mac OS uses HFS, and they're incompatible with each other. However, you can format the drive to work with both Windows and Mac by using the exFAT filesystem. Here's how.
You can format the drive from either Mac or Windows. However, if you want to use part of the drive for OS X's Time Machine backups, you should do this from the Mac, since there's an extra step to make the drive compatible for Time Machine.
How To Format Hdd Osx For Usb For Osx Windows
5. Give the drive a descriptive name and leave the default settings: OS X Extended format and GUID partition map. These will format the drive in OS X's HFS+ filetype so it will be compatible with Time Machine.
Your exFAT-formatted drive or partition can now be used for both Windows and Mac. Note that using a drive frequently between Windows and Mac could increase the chances of file corruption, so make sure you have backups of the files on the shared drive and be extra careful about safely ejecting the drive before disconnecting it from your computer.
2. Open the Disk Management tool. You can do that by typing "disk format" or "disk management" in Windows search or going to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Create and format hard disk partitions.
Hierarchical File System Plus, also known as Mac OS Extended, is the primary file system format used in Mac computers. Windows, on the other hand, runs off file allocation system or New Technology File System. Neither Mac OS nor Windows recognize each other's volume formats. Most users will never need to create an HFS+ disk outside of Mac, but businesses that rely on virtualization to run other operating systems may need to format in Windows a flash drive with an HFS+ partition. Once the partition has been created on the storage device, the Mac OS installation files can be copied to the drive.
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In Disk Utility, you can format an external disk that you can use with both a Microsoft Windows-based computer and a Mac. For example, you might want to do this if you use a flash drive to store data files you need to use on your Mac at home and when using a Windows-based computer at school or the public library.
Right-click in the unallocated space on the initialized disk and select New Simple Volume. Use the wizard to create a partition with the NTFS or FAT32 file system. The drive will now be formatted for use by Windows systems. There will be no space wasted by protected Mac partitions.
Though the default hard disk file systems (also known as format) of Windows and Mac are different, there should be some ways to format an external hard drive to make it compatible with your Mac or PC.
If you need to use an external hard drive on Mac that is not completely compatible with your computer OS and you have the urge to format hard drive for Mac and PC, you should know there is a more feasible way to make your external hard drives compatible with your Mac and PC. This method suits you most if you just want to use it occasionally on different OS or don't want to lose all the files caused by formatting drive for Mac and PC.
Usually, most hard drive manufacturers use the NTFS(New Technology File System) to format their external HDD as a factory standard, including many famous brands such as Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Touch and WD My Passport. This is because Windows is the most commonly used around the world. However, the NTFS format can be a hassle for users who need to use the same external hard drive on both Mac and Windows. Because you can read NTFS drive on Mac only and you can't write to this drive normally in this case.
If there are no important files kept on the drive, you can move on to know how to format external hard drive for Mac and PC, choose a file format that works on either Mac, PC, or both.
To format a Mac external hard drive to store data, you'll need to launch the Disk Utility app, the built-in disk management tool. If you encounter seeing the external hard drive greyed out in Disk Utility on Mac or the external hard drive not showing up in Disk Utility, fix the problems in the first place. Then, you can proceed to choose the best file format for your external disk when erasing it in the Disk Utility app.
Among all the 10 formats (file systems) you can select in macOS 10.13 or above the APFS is the suggested one, because it has the most recent features to work with the best performance and data management. However, it is only compatible with macOS. If your goal is to format drive for Mac and PC, you have to choose FAT or exFAT, compatible file formats for Mac and Windows. And finally, all the other file formats are only used for Mac.
2. Then set the disk information in the Format Partition screen, including allocation unit size, volume label, and format. If you want an interchangeable drive to use on both macOS and Windows, you must choose FAT or exFAT, the format works on Mac and PC.
However, different formats have different advantages and disadvantages. So before you know how to format a hard drive for Mac and PC, you should know the pros and cons of each file system.
NTFS is a proprietary journaling format developed by Microsoft. It is used as the default file system of Windows system hard drive (e.g. Windows 10). NTFS does well in data security based on its encryption, access permission control, and log file.
HFS (Hierarchical File System) Plus or HFS+ is a journaling format developed by Apple Inc. It's the startup disk's default file system in OS before macOS High Sierra. It is also frequently used as Time Machine backup external drive.
If you want to use the same disk on both Mac and Windows computers, you need to choose a format compatible with Mac and Windows, be it the FAT32 or the exFAT. But if you prefer to use the external drive on only one of the operating systems, you can choose APFS (Apple file system) for Mac and NTFS for Windows to work to the utmost extent. To enjoy the features of NTFS on Mac or APFS on Windows, you need the help of a third-party program.
Instead of having the whole external drive formatted, you can also partition a Mac hard drive into two partitions to make the disk work on Mac and PC. One is formatted with a macOS-supported file system, another with a Windows-supported file system conversely. By this means, you can use all the advantages each format has on the respective system with the same drive.
If the drive is not initialized, you need to initialize the external hard drive with Master Boot Record (MBR). Then you can create two new partitions. You need to format one of them as NTFS for Windows and format the other as your wish.
If you see Convert to GPT Disk in the context menu, be it greyed out or lighted, it's an MBR hard drive. Then you can create two or more partitions. And you need to prepare one partition for the NTFS format, and reformat the other with any file system.
If you see Convert to MBR Disk in the menu, it's a GPT hard drive. In this case, you need first backup files, delete the existing partitions, then click the Convert to MBR Disk button. Then, you can create two new partitions. You need to format one partition as NTFS for Windows, and then format the other randomly.
In conclusion, it is easy to format the external hard drive for Mac and Windows. You can either choose to format the whole disk as exFAT/FAT, or you can create two separate partitions of Mac OS Extended and NTFS if you prefer. Anyway if you have more than one external hard drive containing important files and want them to be interchangeable between PC and Mac computers, it's much easier to have a solution that allows your computer to work in any of them. For example, iBoysoft NTFS for Mac is a better and more feasible solution.
Yes, any external hard drives can be formatted for Mac in Disk Utility. The steps below describe the process.1. Plug the external hard drive into your Mac.2. Open the Disk Utility application.3. Select the hard disk and click on Erase tool.4. Fill in disk info and choose a format.5. Click Erase on the pop-up to format the hard drive for Mac.
Jessica Shee is a senior tech editor at iBoysoft. Throughout her 3 years of experience, Jessica has written many informative and instructional articles in data recovery, data security, and disk management to help a lot of readers secure their important documents and take the best advantage of their devices.
I'm a computer novice and i wanna reinstall my windows 10 for my HP laptop since it was crashed, but i have a macbook pro, so I was wonder if it's possible to create a windows 10 bootable installer USB on macOS without terminal?
****EDIT**** The ExFAT formatted drive with Windows ISO did not work as a bootable drive. I had to create a Windows partition on my hard drive and boot into that to make a functioning boot drive.
What does that even mean: The easiest thing to do is just to reformat your drive to 'ExFat' using Disk Utility. Here are the steps! For reference I'm running Mac OS Monterey (v12.0.1 After this process you are able to move larger files into your USB drive
I mean, yeah that is exactly what I was saying. And it certainly does allow you to put larger files into a drive. As far as I could tell it was the only way to do this on Monterey. I tried every other drive format and none of them except ExFAT allowed for the moving of files over 5 GB. 2ff7e9595c
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