Format external hard drive for mac using windows

Apple mac machines support a different file system. Moving files from macformatted external hard drive to pc. However, fat32 has a maximum 4gb file size limit whereas exfat can work with. Youre likely familiar with this utility if youve been using a windows 10 pc for quite some time.

Format your external drive with exfat for both mac and. From the description provided, i understand that you want to format an external hard drive. Both mac os x and windows allow users to format their hard drives using builtin utilities. To sum up, it is easy to format an external hard drive for both mac and windows pc. Before digging in, select a primary format youll use the most. Format external hard drive with windows builtin tool. How to reformat my external hard drive for windows 10. Format a disk for windows computers in disk utility on mac. Now either because of time, corruption or because it may have been. How to format an external drive to work seamlessly. Here, you will learn three ways to format a hard drive in windows 10 by using disk management, a partition management software and diskpart in command prompt.

How to format seagate drive for mac and pc quickly and securely. Step 2 on the left side of the utilities screen, find the name of the external hard drive you want to format and select it. To format your external drive hard drive in windows which works with both platforms, first plugin your drive with windows machine. Change the partition layout from current to 1 partition. If it does not you will need to rightclick and delete the volume first. Using one external usb drive for both windows and mac. Quickly format an external hard drive for mac and windows pc. So, you cant simply use the same drive with both windows and mac. How to format external hard drive mac 2 simple methods. Continue below to format an external hard drive or learn more about disk management. 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.

Format an external hard drive or usb flash drive for mac os x. Sep 02, 2015 hello, thank you for posting your concern here in microsoft community and welcome to the windows 10 family. I need to format an external usb drive to use in both windows and mac. Give the drive a descriptive name and leave the default settings. If you are techy and use windows and mac computers frequently, then you might need to transfer data between mac and pc. This will prompt a new window asking you to select a partition style for your disk. But compared with formatting, an ntfs for mac driver like iboysoft ntfs for mac is a better and feasible solution. Be absolutely sure you have your files off the drive and that youve selected the correct drive you want to format. Scenario one format the drive in mac computer to one single partition drive.

Apr 16, 2020 there are several reasons to format a hard drive to fat32 in windows 10. You can format the drive on your mac or windows computer. Rightclick in the unallocated space on the initialized disk and select new simple volume. How to format your hard drive seagate support canada. Format a usb drive as exfat for mac and windows compatibility.

Whether you are trying to backup mac to an external hard drive, wipe out any personal information and sell the computer, or even use a new operating system, you need to format the hard drive on your mac or pc. How to reformat my external hard drive for windows 10 i have a lacie d2 quadra 1tb external hard drive. Heres what to do if your device is not detected in windows and mac. In the disk management, youll see your external hard drive as partition or. Use the wizard to create a partition with the ntfs or fat32 file system.

The best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac. There will be no space wasted by protected mac partitions. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac laptop mag. The best news is that most devices included mac computers can read and write from fat32 devices. You can format an external hard drive or thumb drive to work seamlessly with both mac and windows by using the exfat file system. How to use toshiba external hard drive on mac solved. Its the most secure, robust file system that a windows user could wish for. How to format a hard drive windows 10, 8, 7, vista, xp. To put it simply, if you want to share external hard drive between mac and pc, you need to format an external hard drive for mac and pc. With exfat, you can store files of any size, and use it with any computer made in the last 20 years. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac cnet. How to format an external hard drive for mac and pc. How to format external hard drive to use on mac and pc. Which of the two scenarios below would be the better format.

If you plan on using an external drive with both macs and pcs, you should format the disk with the exfat file system instead. Choosing the right format for your external hard drive. So, if you want to use an external hard drive on both windows and mac, you need to format it to a filesystem that is compatible with windows pc and mac. The drive will now be formatted for use by windows systems. Open disk management tool by rightclicking on start menu icon and then select disk management. External hard drives, thumb drives, usb drives, flash memory cards, and devices like ipod are examples of storage devices that you can connect to your mac using thunderbolt, usb, or firewire cables, or connect wirelessly using bluetooth. What to do when your external hard drive wont show up. If youre going to be using the drive with a version of windows prior to windows vista, youre going to want to go with mbr. This means its the format of choice for system drives on windows computers. How to share an external hard drive between mac and windows.

Some people are asking for a way to format a hard drive for mac. If you need to expand your storage space with an external hard drive and you use both mac and pc, youll likely run into a few obstacles. Using powershell in windows 10 to format an external hard drive to fat32 windows 10 users can use powershell instead of command prompt to format the external hard drive to the fat32 format. Buying and using an external hd is one thing, getting the most out of it is quite another. To format the drive to work with both platforms you will need use a windows computer to format the disk as exfat. One hurdle youll face is that, by default, these platforms use different. Some users would prefer to the features of windows ntfs file system. How to format or partition an external hard drive for mac. How to share an external drive between a mac and a pc.

Step 1 connect the external hard drive you want to format to your mac, then start the disk utility app that you can find under applications utilities. In this guide, well show you how to format an external hard drive so you can not only get rid of the. Apr 14, 2020 why need to format external hard drive for mac and pc. Luckily, there are thirdparty tools to help you do so. How to format external hard drive to fat32 in windows. Format external hard drive for mac with disk utility. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and. Rightclick on the external hard drive in the volume tab. As the default file system in windows, it can only read by mac os, writing to it is not available. While its convenient to purchase the hard drive that will work with your computer right out of the box, most external hard drives can also be reformatted so youre not limited to your initial choice. Open the disk management tool by rightclicking this pc manage disk management. Usb drives and external hard drives on macos catalina are used for storing and backing up important data such as photos, videos, audios, images, notes, messages, music. You can still easily initialize a hard drivessd in windows 10 with a professional partition management software.

To format the drive in windows, rightclick it in the file explorer window and select format. The best format for your external hard drive the hellotech blog. Apple has built os x yosemite and some previous os x releases with the ability to read from those disks just fine. But to get a hard drive to be compatible for both mac and pc, you have to choose the. Using wd 4 tb my passport for both mac and pc external. How to format a hard drive using the command prompt toms. Oct 16, 2019 the best format for external hard drives. But somehow, macos doesnt allow you to write data to the drive.

Compare the different options for formatting an external hard drive to work with windows and mac. How to format external hard drives for mac and windows. Select the external hard drive on the lefthand side. How to install windows 10 on your mac using a boot. But unfortunately it bit the dust and i decided to get a pc. Ntfs has quite a lot of strong advantages, which may actually make it a good format choice for certain external hard drives, depending on the circumstances. You will learn how to format the external hard disk which has deafult ntfs format, to make it compatible with mac os. External hard drives are computer storage devices which use either a spinning disk or memory chips to save and load your files. Formatting external drives in windows 10 similar to mac, you can also format the external drive in windows to exfat format. Hard drives can be accessed through this pc where files and folders can be created, saved, and loaded. Dec, 2019 you can format the external hard drive or usb drive to make it compatible with both mac and windows machines. If this is the case for you, rightclick the drive you want to format and click initialize disk.

Format a disk for windows computers in disk utility on mac apple. How to format an external hard drive on windows 10. Both fat32 and exfat can be used on windows pc and mac. From what i understand, windows doesnt always like the way mac s do the formatting on some larger drives, though, so give it a try and if your windows machines dont like it, just format the drive with windows. A drive can be formatted with exfat using either a windows or a mac computer. How to format new hard drive on windows 10 windows central. In disk utility on your mac, you can format an external disk for a windows computer. In a few simple steps you are ready to go and can save your backup files to the external drive, keeping your information safe and giving you peace of mind. Usb drives and external hard drives use the windows fat32 to format for compatibility. How to format a hard dr ive on mac to work on mac and pc.

Some hard drives may also include drivers, firmware, or format wizards so be sure to check the user manual before formatting the hard drive. Nov, 2019 if you dont know how to format a hard drive or an external hard drive, youve come to the right place. How can i use my external hard drive on mac os so i can modifyedit files on both oss. To properly format a new hard drive, lets start initializing it using disk management at first.

How to convert mac only external hdd to windows compatible. Apr 17, 2020 to format external hard drive for mac with time machine, you must follow the steps below. Before you can access the files, it needs to be initialized and formatted. How to convert mac hard drive to windows without losing data.

How to format an external drive to work seamlessly with macs. How to convert a macformatted drive to a windows drive. The instructions below are for windows 10, but other versions of windows from windows 7 and up can also format an external drive as exfat for use with mac as well. Formatting an external hard drive would erase everything on it. How to convert mac hard drive to windows without losing. My problems is that i cannot even see the wd hard drive on the mac finder nor on the pcs file explorer the hard drive simply disappeared from both after i had reformatted it to exfat using the pc to do this having gone into the properties of the wd hard drive. For instance, you want to make your drive faster when writing large files to it or make the drive works with nonwindows operating systems. The easiest way to do that is hit cmd and the spacebar at. Please see below on how to reformat your external hard drive on mac and windows. How to format an external hard drive for mac and windows.

How to format an external hard drive with pictures wikihow. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac. However, you can format the drive to work with both windows and mac by using the exfat filesystem. Dec 02, 2019 usb drives and external hard drives use the windows fat32 to format for compatibility. No matter whats your reason to format your hard drive to fat32, youve landed in the right place. For instructions on how to format your hard drive on a mac, please reference the following links. Jan 17, 2019 starting clean how to format new hard drive on windows 10 formatting is an essential task before starting to use a new drive, and in this guide, well show you how to do it on windows 10. Format external hard disk drive for mac os and windows. Using the mac preferred file system is important otherwise the files will be of no use to you. Thats all because its been initialized with windows nt file system ntfs, which is primarily for pcs.

New apple devices will be formatted with apfs while old mac drives can use the hfs file system. Mar 31, 2020 if you buy a new external hard drive, you may notice that working between mac and pc is an often difficult but it doesnt need to be. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac youtube. If the external hard drive is pre formatted for mac, disk management will list 3 partitions and you will not be able to delete the health efi system partition because its a protected partition. Choosing the right format for your external hard drive b. Dec 29, 2015 your exfatformatted drive or partition can now be used for both windows and mac. By default, mac os x will use the guid partition table to format the drive.

How to format usb drive external hard drive on macos catalina. Format usb drive, external hard drive on macos catalina. There are specific thirdparty systems, like digital camcorders, and sony playstation 3, which need the drives to be formatted in either fat32 or exfat format to perform read from and. Mar 22, 2012 the best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac. Format your western digital my passport external hard drive to fat32 or exfat format so to transfer the data between a mac and windows system conveniently. How to format seagate drive for mac and pc quickly and. This thing is still unknown for many users but doesnt worry its not complex.

Starting clean how to format new hard drive on windows 10 formatting is an essential task before starting to use a new drive, and in this guide, well show you how to do it on windows 10. Connect your external hard drive to your windows 10 pc. How to format an external hard drive the easy way in 2020. However, naturally, disk utility cant format external hard drive to ntfs. Whether it is a hard drive or usb or internal drive, mac uses different format support.

How to format external hard drive mac 2 simple methods revealed. Click go on the top tool bar, and select utilities. How to format a hard drive for mac internal, external or flash. Most external hard drives hd are sold in a format called ntfs, which is designed to work with windows. If youre using an imac, you may find the usb ports on the side of your keyboard or on the back of the imacs screen. Now that you know which format to use, check out our guide on how to format your hard drive on. If you see the drive is ntfs then youll either need to reformat the drive or use a ntfs driver. Your first step to using your toshiba external drive on your mac is to plug your toshiba drive in. At the time of the original posting in 2011, there were some problems getting a mac formatted exfat drive working with windows, it had trouble recognizing those drives.

Macos extended if you primarily use mac with a secondary exfat partition, or. Sep 26, 2018 windows pc and mac use different filesystems. Apr 21, 2020 i have purchased a 1tb portable external seagate hard drive and i would like to use it with both my mac and windows computer. Select that disk and click the erase button, the one highlighted in red in the screenshot below. Jun 18, 2019 thank you for your response monicabang much appreciated. Currently, hard drives for windows pc are always formatted with ntfs, while hard disks for mac.

To access the disk management tool, click the windows icon and type disk management. Even though most people associate formatting with system installation, there are many other reasons why you might want to format your hard drive. Mac can read all the file system formats including windows. Step 1 open finder, applications, then go to utilities and disk utility step 2 follow the steps above to format the drive, and then you can use it with time machine on your mac system. As a result, you will need to format the hard drive for mac. Out of the box, windows can not read or write hfs drives, and macs are unable to write to ntfs drives.

Use external storage devices with mac apple support. Note that using a drive frequently between windows and mac could increase the chances of file corruption, so make. Choose the exfat file system in the list and click start. Insert the drives usb cable into one of the thin, rectangular slots in your computers casing. Your old external windows pc drive will work great on the mac. However, when we connect a ntfs formatted disk to mac, mac os x doesnt allow us to write files to the drive neither edit files, though it can read. I know mac operating system doesnt fully support ntfs formatted drive. In this video i help you guys convert your mac only external hdd into a windows compatible one. Windows uses ntfs and mac os uses hfs and theyre incompatible with each other.

Remember, this will erase all the files on the drive. How to format a hard drive on mac to work on mac and pc. If you want to format your external hard drive to work with mac and windows computers, you should use exfat. You can select the exfat format when using the disk. I want to know which file system i should apply for the seagate external hard drive so that it can be compatible both with mac and pc. Feb 08, 2020 so, you just bought an external hard drive or a portable ssd and wanted to use it on your mac. Want to use one external drive for both your windows pc and your mac. What format for my external drive allows use with mac and windows. How to use same external usb or hard disk with mac and. You can use this and still share fat32 volumes with a pc, but if youll primarily be using the drive with windows, and. In the disk management, youll see your external hard drive. Sep 17, 2019 right click on your toshiba external hard drive icon and pick get info from the menu.