Formatting A Mac External Hard Drive For Windows

#Formatting A External Hard Drive For Windows Update For ExFAT#

In a few simple steps you are ready to go and can save your back-up files to the external drive, keeping your information safe and giving you peace of mind.In the Disk Utility app on your Mac, choose View > Show All Devices. If the drive comes formatted in NTFS, which is the default file system for Windows, you're going to want to re-format the drive because Mac OS X can't write files to NTFS-formatted volumes (at least not without a bunch of extra work that's beyond the scope of this article).Part 2: Format External Hard Drive for Mac with Disk Utility Reformatting an external hard drive for use with Mac OS is not as difficult as it might seem. The first format, FAT32, is fully compatible with Mac OS X, though with some drawbacks that we'll discuss later. This article explains about file systems and provides instruction to format a drive on Windows and Mac.The overwhelming majority of USB flash drives you buy are going to come in one of two formats: FAT32 or NTFS. But in order for the computer and drive to communicate with one another, the drive has to be formatted with the correct file system.

Cross compatibility rests on the OS itself (and additional plugins). The Mac drive may have an EFI System Partition on it.External hard drive compatibility rests mostly on the file system (HFS+ for Mac, NTFS for Windows, EXT3 for Linux, etc.). You can then right-click in the empty space and select New Simple Volume to create a partition and format it with the Windows NTFS or FAT32 file systems. Your new drive should appear in the left-hand column, and clicking the 'Partition' tab will bring up info on the drive which includes its current format.If youвЂ™re lucky, you can just right-click each partition on the Mac drive and select Delete Volume to remove the partitions. Click.How do you tell which format your brand-new USB drive has? Hook it up to your Mac and launch the Disk Utility app, located in your Utilities folder (which is in Applications).

The 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)' option will have the highest degree of support for Mac OS X features, and there's no limit to the size of files you can put on the drive.Disadvantages: Windows-running PCs can read files from drives formatted this way, but they can't write to them (at least not without the same amount of work it takes to get OS X to write to NTFS-formatted drives). You can even set up an OS X startup drive if you have the right files, the know-how, and a big enough flash drive, which will allow you to boot your Mac off an external disk if something goes wrong with your built-in drive. It also includes support for features from OS X Lion, such as Versions. I'll discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the other three formats below.Mac OS Extended (Journaled) - This is the default file system format for Mac OS X drives.Advantages: Formatting your USB flash drive this way will give you full interoperability with Macs. Unless you have extraordinary needs, you can safely ignore two of them: Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled) and Free Space. If the drive is listed as NTFS-formatted, you're going to need to format it to something else if you want full compatibility with Mac OS X.There are several possible file system formats you can use for a USB flash drive, and changing them in Disk Utility is as easy as selecting the number of partitions you want on the drive (usually just one), picking the format you want for the drive, and clicking 'Apply.' Note that this will erase all information on the drive, so make absolutely sure you've got copies of everything before moving forward.Disk Utility gives you five different choices for drive formats in OS X Lion.

It's the closest thing we have to a universal file system format, which is why most flash drives are formatted this way right out of the box.Disadvantages: FAT32 doesn't support files larger than 4 GB, and that's its greatest drawback. Virtually all cameras and videocameras support FAT32, too. You can also move files to video game systems like the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii. A drive formatted this way can easily transfer files between Macs and PCs. Otherwise, you may need to consider one of the file formats discussed below.MS-DOS (FAT) - This is Disk Utility's name for the FAT32 filesystem.Advantages: FAT32 offers near-universal interoperability with virtually every computing system on the planet.

Formatting A External Hard Drive For Windows Update For ExFAT

Of greater issue is that most consumer electronics (cameras, camcorders, video game systems) don't support exFAT, either. If you won't be dealing with older Macs or PCs, this may not be a problem. It has one big advantage over FAT32: exFAT supports file sizes larger than 4 GB, so if you have a need to move huge files between Macs and PCs, this is likely the format you'll want for your flash drive.ExFAT is supported by the following operating systems:Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6.5 or greater)Windows XP SP2 or later (with an additional update for exFAT support)Disadvantages: As a relatively newer file system format, exFAT isn't supported in older versions of Mac OS X (anything prior to 10.6.5) or anything older than Windows XP SP2. However, those downsides may be more than outweighed by FAT32's near-universal support, and if you don't think you're going to be dealing with files bigger than 4 GB, this may be the optimal choice.ExFAT - A newer file format, supported in Mac OS X 10.6.5 or later.Advantages: exFAT has many of the same advantages as FAT32 in that it's a disk format that offers interoperability between Macs and PCs. Furthermore, FAT32 doesn't support OS X Lion's Versions feature - something users have discovered the hard way when working directly off of files stored on a USB flash drive (something we recommend against doing).

Formatting A Mac External Hard Drive For Windows