Solved Answer Learning how to format an external drive on Mac is necessary for numerous reasons. One of them is that you might purchase a new USB Flash drive which is pre-formatted for Windows OS and you will be unable to use it on your Mac. However, this is one of the many reasons why you should know how to format the drive for both Mac and Windows operating systems. Fortunately, Mac computers have an already built-in Disk Utility which makes it easy to format external drives for different types of formats. Although, you should be aware that not all formats are designed to work on all operating systems. Therefore, your mac might not support some drive formats which are developed for other OS.
Here is a quick summary of which format you should use depending on your preferences:. Apple File System (APFS) is a new file format which is readable only by Macs running High Sierra. Likewise, you will not be able to use your drive on Macs with older operating systems and well as on Windows, or Linux computers;. MacOS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled, Encrypted) (HFS+) is an excellent choice for those who would like to protect their external drive in case it is lost or stolen. You can encrypt the data stored on the drive and put a password on it. Additionally, note that this file format is readable for Windows OS devices. However, they cannot be used else way;.
MS-DOS FAT (FAT32) is great for those who share their drives with PC users since this format is readable by Windows, Linux and Mac operating systems. Although, files are limited to 4GB. Thus, people needing more space can find it useless;. ExFAT allows users to share the drive with PC users as well as offers over 4GB of space;. NTFS format is designed only for Windows OS. Likewise, Mac computers can just read this file format without the ability to write to it. How to format a drive on Mac.
Want to use a single external drive with both a Mac and a Windows PC? Follow our guide to learn The best way to do it is with a drive formatted as FAT32. Though this format has some limitations Windows prefers to use NTFS (which stands for New Technology File System, though it has been. Aug 22, 2018 Please see below on how to reformat your external hard drive on Mac and Windows. DISCLAIMER: Please keep in mind that reformatting will result in the loss of all the data on the hard drive so make sure you back up your data elsewhere before starting.
To restore your computer's peak performance, you have to purchase licensed version of Reimage Reimage repair software. Before proceeding to the instructions, note that formatting the drive requires to erase all contents stored on it.
Therefore, you should copy the files from the drive to avoid losing any valuable information. Use Disk Utility to format an external drive on Mac. Hit Command + Space and type Disk Utility;. Open it and check the available drives on the left side of the window. Select the drive you need and click Erase button.
Disk Utility will select the file format automatically. However you can change it manually if you know which format you need. For that, head above and check the quick summary of file format types;. Name your drive and proceed to Security options. Select the options from the left (Fastest) to the right (Most Secure);. Click OK and wait until the drive is ready to use.
Copy the files back to your drive. Reimage - a patented specialized Windows repair program. It will diagnose your damaged PC. It will scan all System Files, DLLs and Registry Keys that have been damaged by security threats.
Reimage - a patented specialized Mac OS X repair program. It will diagnose your damaged computer. It will scan all System Files and Registry Keys that have been damaged by security threats. This patented repair process uses a database of 25 million components that can replace any damaged or missing file on user's computer. To repair damaged system, you have to purchase the licensed version of malware removal tool.
![Best Format For External Drive To Use With Mac And Windows Best Format For External Drive To Use With Mac And Windows](http://cdn.osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/erase-external-drive-mac-format.jpg)
FAT32 (called MS-DOS (FAT) by Disk Utility; a filesystem originally released in 1977 and updated a few times since, lastly in 1996) really is the only cross platform filesystem that is going to work fully out of the box with Windows and Mac OS X. Be careful though, if you are using Disk Utility to format the drive, you should make sure to choose the Master Boot Record partitioning scheme (hit the 'Options.' Button below the 'Partition Layout' control on the Partition pane).
The default GUID partitioning scheme won't be recognised by 32-bit Windows XP and earlier Windows operating systems and Mac OS X versions earlier than 10.4. Mac OS X has had support for reading NTFS formatted disk for a few versions, but still doesn't have write support. There are a few third-party products that allow Mac OS X to read NTFS formatted drives but as far as I'm aware the free ones aren't as well maintained as the commercial ones. I'd love for someone to tell me differently. For a while I've been using but as far as I can tell it hasn't been updated since December 2008.
Tuxera (who develop one of the commercial NTFS drivers for Mac OS X) have a list of free NTFS drivers that are developed from the same NTFS-3G source used by Linux to read NTFS drives. My answer from a similar question: If you're working exclusively with 10.6.6 or greater on the Mac side, try. Native read/write support under Windows and OS X, and none of the file size limits of FAT32. Disk Utility will happily format your drives using it. It's probably your best option, as it avoids any user-space filesystem drivers, which personally make me a bit uneasy. XP and Vista support exFAT with appropriate updates: Vista as of SP1, and XP with SP2 and the Also a good point from the above posters re: MBR vs. GPT on 32bit systems.
NTFS is a better filesystem than fat32 and is well supported by many OSes. OSX has several approach accessing NTFS read-write. The open-source solution is to install ntfs-3g with macports, and modify your system's auto-mount script. The disk can be formatted with windows, or with ntfsprogs on a mac. ( filesystem operations always envolve risk, and very likely lots of command-line work.) NTFS is the native windows filesystem. It's open-source drivers work quite stably and reliably.
NTFS will work like a charm if you'll ever need linux support. If you don't feel comfortable altering the system yourself, paid softwares and services can always be found. I can post my ntfs auto-mount script for mac if you can't find one with google.