Os x, windows, and linux all use different hard drive formatting for normal system operations. Choosing disk format type while formatting external drive. If you want to format your external hard drive to work with mac and windows computers, you should use exfat. Select mac os extended journaled, or your preferred format type. That said, if you are using smaller file sizes fat32 can suffice.
Designed by microsoft to provide similar compatibility to fat32 without the pesky. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac. For drives used with intelbased macs only, the guid partition map should the option to go for. When you connect the drive to your pc it should have no problem reading the partition set up for a pc. Means if one want to transfer movie or any stuff greater than 4gb it cant be done in this format. A hard drive format refers to how the operating system stores the data on the drive. A window will pop up where you can choose the format ntfs, fat32, or exfat. To format an external storage device, connect it to one of the ports on your mac. People might need to format a hard drive or an external hard drive in windows 10 for various reasons. Now in this interface, you will see a format option. The former option can help ensure that the usb drive is made fully compatible with your mac, since most usb drives are preformatted for windows computers by default.
If you are looking to format a disk that will be shared with windows users, the mbr scheme and msdos fat are the best choices. Disk utility will automatically choose the format for you. In the main interface, right click the partition on that need. This mac propriety file system and is used in ios and mac. 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. Is there a way to completely format or erase the data from hard drive so it. May 01, 2020 how to erase a disk for mac use disk utility to erase format a hard disk, ssd, flash drive, or other storage device. Choose view show all devices from the menu bar in disk utility.
Apr 14, 2020 why need to format external hard drive for mac and pc. Opening disk management can be done a number of ways depending on your version of windows, but the easiest method is to type diskmgmt. Step 1 open finder, applications, then go to utilities and disk utility. The best format for your external hard drive the hellotech blog. This command erases the entire selected disk, including all its files and partitions whether. In disk utility on your mac, format disks or volumes using apple file system. To format external drive to file system compatible with mac and pc, connect the drive to your computer and follow the detailed steps given below take formatting hard drive to exfat in windows 7 for example. How to format drive with compatible file system for mac. With exfat, you can store files of any size, and use it with any computer made in the last 20 years. Everything stored on a hard drive is measured in terms of its file size. If you want to create multiple partitions on your external hard drive in fact, you should for better file organization, heres a stepbystep guide. If you have a mac you should format the drive for your mac first thing, before you start using it.
Then select disk utility from the utilities window and click continue. 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. Some external hard drives need to be plugged into an outlet to. Just select the one you want to format and click on the erase tab. To format an external hard drive for mac with time machine, you must follow the steps below.
Windows xp10 operating system has a builtin program to format a hard drive. Once you open the disk utility app, you can see all the drives on your mac are listed on the lefthand sidebar. Choose one of the following mac os extended file system formats for compatibility with mac computers using macos 10. Best external hard drives for macs in 2020 techradar. For most reasons to erase, including when reformatting a disk or selling, giving away, or trading in your mac. Most accessory manufacturers tend to build accessories for the more dominant platforms, which is why many computer peripherals tend to be more focused on. Sep 20, 2019 but formatting a drive with exfat offers one huge advantage. Choosing a hard drive to back up your data can be a quest in and of itself. Here are your macos file system options and how to pick the best one for you. Open the disk utility app and highlight your external hard drive.
Which mac file system is best for an external drive. Macs are currently sold with three types of storage devices. Uses the mac format journaled hfs plus to protect the integrity of the hierarchical file system. Format usb or external hard drive for mac using mac disk utility format usb or external hard drive for mac on windows pc using thirdparty usb format tool. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac. Both mac os x and windows allow users to format their hard drives using builtin utilities. Quickly format an external hard drive for mac and windows pc. How to format external hard drive mac 2 simple methods. Heres how to format a drive using a mac including how to format a drive for windows and mac so the contents can be read on both platforms, and what format to use for time machine. Format external hard drive or usb drive for mac easeus. To format a hard drive for compatibility of both mac and windows you can use fat32 format which has both readwrite capability on winmac respectively. It just lets you write to ntfs, which i believe isnt so natively and it also lets you chose ntfs in disk utility, the same as you can choose fat 32 or something like that. How to format a drive for mac and pc compatibility macyourself. How to format a hard drive or ssd to erase it forever.
Disk utility lets you format your drive using many filesystems like the three listed above. Compare portable, usb and external hard drive models for office and home and shop online. Open disk management, the hard drive manager included with all versions of windows. How to format external hard drives for mac and windows. How to erase a disk for mac use disk utility to erase format a hard disk, ssd, flash drive, or other storage device. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size. Select your macs hard drive in the lefthand column, to reveal more options, then select the partition button. What is the difference between the format types in the mac. You can format external hard drive or other external drives with exfat or fat32 file system for mac and windows, so that both mac and windows computer can read and write it. It contains information on the partition, including sector size, position with respect to the primary partition, types of partitions present. Make sure the allocation unit size is set to default and type in a volume label.
Under file system, choose the file system you want to use. So despite the disadvantages, exfat is your best option for. Mac data eraser doyourdata super eraser for mac can easily format mac hard drive partition and erase all data permanently on the hard drive partition. And you can buy external or internal drives of three types. If you bought an external hard drive, it too needs to be formatted before use. A selection of the best programs for different types of formatting a hard disk drive hdd, ssd, raid and removable media storage devices usb flash drives, sd card. Partitioning an external hard drive for m apple community. This is not hard to do, and will take you only about a minutes effort. Launch disk utility, which is built right into mac os. This post highlights the different types of hard drives for mac that you can use, and how to choose the best backup hardware for your needs. Now that you know which format to use, check out our guide on how to format your hard drive on. Highlight your drive and click partition in disk utility.
How to format an external hard drive for use with a mac. The one you wish to use on a pc you should format msdos fat. This is a default file system for linux os including raspberry pi. In the partition information box, enter an appropriate name for. Disk formatting is the process of preparing a data storage device such as a hard disk drive, solidstate drive, floppy disk or usb flash drive for initial use. Im usually change hard drives to a bigger capacity ones and sold the old ones to others. Feb 08, 2020 how to partition an external hard drive on mac. When you format a disk, the file system you choose essentially governs which devices can read or write to the disk. Since mac os x and windows use totally different file systems, the way a drive is formatted can.
The maximum individual file size for exfat is 16 eb. The different partition format types on mac the different partition format types on mac when you attach a storage disk to a mac with the purpose of erasing or repartitioning it, youll be presented with the option of selecting one of the three available partition maps. If you already used your external hard drive on a pc, be sure to back up any files on it. If you format your external hard drive to hfs, you can use it on mac and linux by removing journaling. The standard way to back up a mac is to use a hard disk connected via usb or thunderbolt. For mac owners, one of the most annoyinginconvenient aspects of owning a mac is the external drive compatibility. How to choose the right hard disk for your mac the mac. Click go on the top tool bar, and select utilities. Most external hard drives you buy will come out of the box preformatted for a windows computer ntfs. File system formats available in disk utility on mac apple support. How to format a hard drive for mac that would be sold to another person.
The videos below demonstrate the complete process of formatting an external hard drive for full mac os x compatibility, this uses the. Aug 10, 2018 launch disk utility, which is built right into mac os. So if you have files or folders with the same name but use different capitalization, then youll need to get two different file paths. Discover the world of external hard drives for mac. Luckily, this can be done without any complicated booting procedures all you have to do is plug it in, open disk utility while your mac is working as usual, select it in the sidebar and follow the same procedure described above in the using disk utility section. If the drive is internal, it should already show up in. So youre using disk utility to partition your new hard drive when youre. Partitioning is the process of writing the hard drive sectors that will make up the partition table.
Follow these easy steps to format a hard drive in windows 10, windows 8, windows 7, windows vista, or windows xp. Different types of hard drive file system format types. Even though most people associate formatting with system installation, there are many other reasons why you might want to format your hard drive. How to format or partition an external hard drive for mac. Click on the erase option from the four options available in the main window. If you are a personal user, you can try its professional edition. However, to use it on windows you can hfs explorer read only. Dec 12, 2017 ntfs ntfs, short for windows nt file system, is a propitiatory file system created by microsoft for its windows line of opperating system. File system formats available in disk utility on mac. File system formats available in disk utility on mac apple. The easiest way to do that is hit cmd and the spacebar at the same time and type in disk utility to find the program.
After youre done, dont forget to remove the external hard. Step 2 follow the steps above to format the drive, and then you can use it with time machine on your mac system. The mac drive may have an efi system partition on it. How to format drive with compatible file system for mac and. In some cases, the formatting operation may also create one or more new file systems. Most external hard drives hd are sold in a format called ntfs, which is designed to work with windows. Format an external hard drive or usb flash drive for mac os x. Mac os journaled is the formatting option for mac and ntfs or msdoc is the. For example, folders named homework and homework are two different. Macyourself blog archive how to format a drive for mac and pc. How to format hard drives on windows, mac and linux. Turn the drive on, and make sure it appears in the finder.
Bonus tip data recovery from formatted hard drive on mac. For instance, users want to write data to and read data from, to do a clean installation of the windows system, to get rid of a virus or malware, to erase the data before giving the drive to someone else or throwing it away. A hard drive is the hardware component that stores all of your digital content. If you dont see this option, try typing create and format hard disk partitions into start. If youre lucky, you can just rightclick each partition on the mac drive and select delete volume to remove the partitions. You have to set it up correctly before getting starting. Mac os extended casesensitive, journaled mac os extended casesensitive msdos fat what are the differences among these. Click your hard drives name in the window near the bottom of the screen. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac laptop mag. Repartition the drive to create the three partitions. Nov 19, 2009 ntfs3g just ads ntfs to the supported format types in osx. The first part of the formatting process that performs basic medium preparation is often referred to as lowlevel formatting. The sidebar now shows your disks devices and any containers. Apple file system apfs apfs is apples latest file system new macos, new filesystem.
Before data can be stored onto a hard drive or removable media, it must be formatted to a file system. During the formatting process, it will format the mac hard drive partition first, then overwrite the disk space with blank data. What is the difference between the format types in the mac os x disk utility. Oct 16, 2019 the best format for external hard drives. To format hard drive for mac and windows without data loss, we suggest using minitool partition wizard and its convert ntfs to fats32 function.
Dec 29, 2015 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. In the partition layout dropdown menu, select 1 partition. If you dont see the partition map scheme option, it is likely because disk utility doesnt list all volumes. For most reasons to erase, including when reformatting a disk or selling, giving away, or trading in your mac, you should erase your entire disk. For example, here wed type select disk 2 finally, type clean and press enter. What is the difference between the format types in the mac os. Sep 08, 2015 disk utility has 4 format types on my mac. Smaller external hard drives, ssds, and usb flash keys format quickly, while a larger hard drive may take a while longer. How to format a hard drive windows 10, 8, 7, vista, xp. Sure, you could read a mac formatted drive on windows or read a windows formatted drive on a mac, but both solutions either cost money or are unstable. Want to format a hard drive for mac and pc compatibility. It contains information on the partition, including sector size, position with respect to the primary partition, types of partitions present, operating systems installed, etc.
Formatting your drive will wipe out all the data in it. The different partition format types on mac when you attach a storage disk to a mac with the purpose of erasing or repartitioning it, youll be presented with the option of selecting one of the three available partition maps. Select the mounted drive on the left hard side bar. Guid partition map, master boot record, and apple partition map. There are three common filesystems that are used today. Mar 22, 2012 the best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac. Dont bypass this, if you will use the drive with your mac only. Os x extended journaled os x extended casesensitive, journaled msdos fat exfat. Disk utility on mac supports several file system formats. There are multiple different types of file systems a hard drive or removable media can be formatted. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac cnet. Compare the different options for formatting an external hard drive to work with windows and mac. Want to use one external drive for both your windows pc and your mac. If you want to make use of your macs thunderbolt port, then this is the best external hard drive for macs.
Choosing a file system is basically choosing between these three options. For instance, users want to write data to and read data from, to do a clean installation of the windows system, to get rid of a virus or malware, to erase the data before giving the drive to someone else or throwing it away, or some other reasons. Be sure to doublecheck this you could accidentally wipe the wrong drive if you select the wrong disk here. Everything you need to know about your macs hard 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. Partitioning a hard drive for mac, windows, and linux ccm. Choosing the right format for your external hard drive b. Many businesses and households have multiple pcs of different types in their homewindows, macos, and linux being the most common. We will discuss some of the most popular formats out there. Although we know its limitation of 4gb file size only. You might be curious to know, whats the right hard disk for your mac. Mar 12, 2018 want to format a hard drive for mac and pc compatibility. Select your drive from the list and rightclick on it.
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