Plug in your external HDD to the USB port of your computer> then go to my computer > find your external drive > right-click it > and select format. Formatting a drive on Windows is quite simple.
#Usb drive format for mac and windows how to#
Thoroughly research any product advertised on the site before you decide to download and install it. Now that we know the good and bad about every file system, let see how to format a drive in Windows, MAC, and Linux. In this article, we will introduce 5 disk formatting tools for Windows and Mac to help you securely format hard drive/USB flash drive or memory card on a PC or a Mac. Watch out for ads on the site that may advertise products frequently classified as a PUP (Potentially Unwanted Products). If you want to format a hard drive or USB flash drive on your computer, disk formatting tool is the best choice. The page appears to be providing accurate, safe information.
MacOS shows you the options, which look something like this: Click on Erase. Select Disk Utility, and then choose the drive to format. Standard Disclaimer: This is a non-Microsoft website. To format a hard drive on your Mac, follow these instructions: Turn on your Macintosh notebook computer or desktop system and login. You can uninstall that trial version once you have backed up the data on that drive Install that, then restart your PC, Start the utility and connect the drive, you will then have access to that Mac drive like any other PC hard driveĬopy everything form that drive, then you can format that to NTFS for use on a PC Id love for someone to tell me differently.
#Usb drive format for mac and windows mac os x#
There are a few third-party products that allow Mac OS X to read NTFS formatted drives but as far as Im aware the free ones arent as well maintained as the commercial ones. Ĭlick the link below to download the 5 day free trial of a great utility MacDrive Mac OS X has had support for reading NTFS formatted disk for a few versions, but still doesnt have write support. The other formatsContents 1 How to Format USB Drive for. File systems are the sort of thing that many computer users take for granted. USB Format For Mac And PC To share a USB drive between a Mac and a Windows PC, there are two disk formats to choose from: exFAT and FAT32. If you have files larger than 4 GB and mostly share with Macs, choose HFS+.
Windows cannot natively access a Mac formatted drive. If you have files larger than 4 GB and mostly share with Windows PCs, choose NTFS.