1. Format A Drive For Mac And Pc
2. Format Usb Flash Drive For Mac And Pc
3. Best Usb Format For Mac
4. Format Usb For Mac And Pc Use
5. Usb Drive Format For Mac And Pc
6. Format Usb Drive For Mac And Pc On Windows

Option 1: Format a USB drive as EexFAT in This PC. Press Windows logo key + E to open File Explorer. Right-click on the drive you want to format, click on  Format. Under  File system box. Oct 25, 2016  USB devices,that are formatted in MAC format. It's format type is hfs. You cannot open the USB devices in windows. If you want to use the USB devices in windows. Jun 14, 2018  Format USB drive for Mac and PC via freeware AOMEI Partition Assistant, a free powerful format tool, is specially designed for Windows operating systems. It can support almost all file systems including Ext2, Ext3, NTFS, FAT32,exFAT, etc. You can use it to format USB drive quickly and securely.

What is the best file system for USB or external hard drive on Mac?

Format A Drive For Mac And Pc

APFS: The proprietary Apple file system developed as a replacement for HFS+, with a focus on flash drives, SSDs, and encryption. APFS was released with iOS 10.3 and macOS 10.13, and will become the mandatory file system for those operating systems. FAT32: The File Allocation Table 32 (FAT32) was the standard Windows file system before NTFS. If you want the USB device to be readable by the both Mac and Windows devices, then you have three options – NTFS, FAT or ExFAT. The NTFS files can be read by the MacOS, but you cannot write anything to the storage device. With ExFAT, you can write and read on both MAC and Windows PCs and is our recommended option for an ultra-portable USB device. If you want the storage device to only show up on Mac systems, then format your storage device with APFS. Jul 22, 2019  On Windows, connect your thumb drive. Click Start File Explorer This PC. Right-click your flash drive and then select Format. In the File System list.

Windows and Mac OS X use different file systems. Windows uses NTFS and Mac can't write files to volumes with NTFS format.

So, if you want to use a USB flash drive or an external hard drive with NTFS format on Mac, you should first reformat the devices to the Mac OS Extended file system. It is the best way to ensure full Mac compatibility of a new external hard drive or flash disk.

Usually, FAT32 which can be read and wrote on Mac is recommended for maximum compatibility. And if you need to transfer files larger than 4 GB between Macs and Windows computers, exFAT or MS-DOS (FAT) is better.

How to format USB flash drive or external hard drive for Mac

But how can you format USB flash drive or external hard drive for Mac? Don’t worry! This page will show you two ways to do this job:

Format USB or external hard drive for Mac using Mac disk utility
Format USB or external hard drive for Mac on Windows PC using third-party USB format tool

Now, you can follow these two solutions to format any hard drive, flash drive, USB drive, SSD or any other external storage drive so as to make them work on your Mac now.

Method 1. Format USB or external hard drive for Mac using Mac Disk utility

Windows offers users built-in disk management tool to create, delete, resize, merge and format partitions. You can try the following steps to format USB or external hard drive for Mac with Disk Utility on Mac.

1. 1. Connect the USB or external hard drive to your Mac computer.
2. 2. Launch the Disk Utility by clicking 'Applications' > 'Utilities'.

1. 3. Locate and click on your USB or external hard drive in Disk Utility and then click on 'Erase'.

1. 4. Next to 'Format', click the contextual menu and select 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)'.
2. 5. Reset the drive name and click 'Erase', confirm the operation on the next pop-up window.

1. Wait for the process to complete and then you'll get compatible HFS+ file system on your external hard drive or USB, which will make your device compatible and workable on your Mac.

Method 2. Format USB or external hard drive for Mac using third-party USB format tool on a Windows PC

If you need a simpler format tool to format USB or external hard drive to FAT32 to make them work on Mac, you can apply a third-party format tool to format them on Windows PC. EaseUS partition software is a popular disk partition management tool which is available for all hard disk related jobs such as format disk partition, extend system partition, settle low disk space problem.

Now you can try it to format USB or external hard drive on your Windows PC by following the steps below. If you stored important data on the USB or external hard drive, you can try this tool to convert NTFS to FAT32 without formatting.

Step 1: Launch EaseUS Partition Master, right-click the partition on your external hard drive/USB/SD card which you want to format and choose the 'Format' option.

Step 2: Assign a new partition label, file system (NTFS/FAT32/EXT2/EXT3), and cluster size to the selected partition, then click 'OK'.

Step 3: In the Warning window, click 'OK' to continue.

Step 4: Click the 'Execute Operation' button in the top-left corner to review the changes, then click 'Apply' to start formatting your external hard drive/USB/SD card.

After this, you can connect your external hard drive/USB to Mac computer and use it to save data by then.

Updated on January 7th, 2019

This article shows you how to format an external hard drive via different methods, and you can follow these methods to format external hard drive for PC, Mac or Linux.

External hard drive is popular storage device and it can be used to store all kinds of digital information such as images, documents, apps, emails, etc. You can connect external hard drive to computer via USB cable and then transfer data with internal hard drive. Regardless of the brand or model, the first thing you may need to do after purchasing an external hard drive might be partitioning and formatting it.

Formatting external disk can be done via various methods and it can be formatted to a range of file system so that you can use the disk under different operating system platforms. The formatting process removes all data on the partition and thus causes data loss. You should create a backup for important data before formatting if the disk contains significant files.

A brand-new external hard drive is usually partitioned into s single partition with NTFS file system. Still many users would like to format the external hard drives and people do that due to various reasons:

• Format external hard drive to required file system. The brand-new disk you purchase might not be formatted to the file system type you need. To change file system type, formatting should be done.
• To quickly remove content from external hard drive. Quick formatting is able to format a partition within seconds, and all data on the volume will be deleted. This is a good solution to delete data and free up disk space.
• To optimization performance for disk. Formatting can clear data fragmentation quickly and easily.
• Remove virus or malware. Since external hard drive might be used on many computers, it tends to infect virus. Many users would format it to clear virus and avoid more damages.
• To fix file system errors. Sometimes external hard drive may become RAW or reports errors like “The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable”, you can fix these errors by formatting the volume after file recovery.

Step 1: Connect your external hard drive with your computer and open Windows Explorer to check if it can be recognized.

Note: if you have stored data to the drive, please back it up before formatting the disk.

Step 2: Right-click on the external hard disk and select “Format” option from context menu.

Step 3: On the formatting window, select Quick Format option, choose file system format, and click Start. Also you can enter a name for the drive under Volume Label.

Step 4: System prompts formatting removes all data and asks confirmation for the action. Click OK and formatting starts.

This method formats external hard drive using Windows built-in utility Disk Management. If your external hard drive does not show up in Windows Explorer, you can follow this instruction to complete the formatting.

Step 1: Access Windows 10 Disk Management by right-clicking Start menu and selecting “Disk Management” item from the list.

Step 2: Locate the external hard drive in Disk Management and check its status.

If there is not partition on the disk or the disk is marked with Not Initialized, you cannot format it directly.

The next step assumes the external hard drive is full of unallocated space and shows how to format it.

Step 3: Right-click on unallocated disk space and select New Simple Volume from the context menu.

Step 4: You can see the “Welcome to the New Simple Volume Wizard” now. Click Next button to proceed.

Step 5: The wizard will ask you to select set partition size, drive letter, file system, format method, etc. step by step. You can follow suggested option to complete the process.

Want to use external hard drive under both Windows PC and Mac? In this case, you should consider the hurdle that these operating systems support different filesystems. The default file system in Windows is NTFS, while Mac OS users HFS. The filesystem that is compatible with Windows and Mac is exFAT and FAT32.

exFAT VS FAT32, which one should be chosen for Max and PC? It is recommended to use exFAT by many experts, because FAT32 has a maximum 4GB file size limit and exFAT does not has such limitation, and exFAT also performs better than FAT32. FAT32 is also a good choice if you do not store files whose single size does not exceed 4GB.

FAT32 and exFAT file system is supported by Windows though, they are originally designed for removable storage devices like USB flash drive, SD card. When you try to format an external hard drive which has very large capacity in Windows, FAT32 or exFAT may not be available. Also, some users may encounter error “The volume is too big for FAT32”. In this section, we’ll use a free Windows partition manager to complete the formatting task.

Eassos PartitionGuru is free Windows partition manager and it supports various file systems such as FAT32, NTFS, exFAT, Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, etc. and the formatting process is very simple.

Step 1: Install and launch Eassos PartitionGuru from your computer and find the external disk you want to format.

Step 2: Right-click on the partition to be formatted and select “Format Current Partition” option from context menu.

Format Usb Flash Drive For Mac And Pc

Step 3: Select Filesystem type from the drop-down list and click Format button.

Good games for mac. Step 4: Click Yes button when Eassos PartitionGuru asks confirmation for the operation.

This part of this guide applies to format external or portable hard drive to Ext2, Ext3 or Ext4 file system under Windows 10/8/7, so that the drive can be used under Linux.

Step 1: Connect the portable drive to computer and launch Eassos PartitionGuru. Then you can see the drive is displayed in the software.

Best Usb Format For Mac

Step 2: Select the partition you want to format to Linux file system, and click “Format” button from toolbar.

Format Usb For Mac And Pc Use

Step 3: The Format window pops up and you can select Linux filesystem from Ext4, Ext3 and Ext3 from drop-down list. Then click Format button.

Usb Drive Format For Mac And Pc

Format Usb Drive For Mac And Pc On Windows

Step 4: Click Yes button to continue and formatting will be completed within a couple of seconds.