
- DRIVE FORMAT FOR BOTH MAC AND WINDOWS FOR MAC
- DRIVE FORMAT FOR BOTH MAC AND WINDOWS MAC OS X
- DRIVE FORMAT FOR BOTH MAC AND WINDOWS MAC OSX
- DRIVE FORMAT FOR BOTH MAC AND WINDOWS PC
You'll see the MacOS Utilities window choose "Disk Utility." Now you can choose to erase your startup drive, and choose "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" as the operating system. To get around that problem, hold down the Command + R keys when you turn on your Mac and let go when the logo appears. If you want to format your Mac's system drive, you can't do that when the Mac is running normally because the drive is in use by the operating system. If you must use the same drive between a Mac and Windows computer, the drive must be formatted to the exFAT format. Usually, you'll want ExFAT, which is the default for the MacOS.
DRIVE FORMAT FOR BOTH MAC AND WINDOWS FOR MAC
Microsoft NTFS for Mac by Tuxera provides read-write support for NTFS-formatted USB drives with rock-solid.
DRIVE FORMAT FOR BOTH MAC AND WINDOWS PC
What Can’t A PC And A Mac Share No Applications or Program files. And you can share word documents, PDFs, videos and photos. ExFAT is compatible with Mac and Windows. By this point in time, most computers you encounter will work fine with exFAT.Select the drive you want to format and then choose “Erase.”Ĥ. At the top of the window, click "Erase."ĥ. In the pop-up window, choose the file system you want to use. Do everything with Windows drives on your Mac. Why Is The Shared Partition For Mac And Windows Created As ExFAT Because both PCs and Macs can read and write to external hard drives set up as ExFAT file systems. You would not be able to use this disk for long HD videos and large disk images, for example. Done! Now this drive will work with Macs and PCs.Īlthough FAT is more compatible with older systems, the maximum 4GB filesize is very limiting. While it is possible to format the external drive in MS DOS (FAT32) format for use with both Macs and PCs, this has a number of side effects that are best.Select exFAT from the drop down box, and click on Start. In general, Macs will read Windows formatted drives (FAT and, I believe NTFS), but Windows doesnt recognize Mac.Right click on the drive, and select Format.Plug the disk into a Windows Vista SP1 or Windows 7 computer.I will leave Windows instructions below for the benefit of Windows users. Mac instructions above will now work for exFAT. It appears the issue has since been fixed and disks formatted exFAT on OS X 10.7 (Lion) and 10.8 (Mountain Lion) are working with Windows. You can share and watch the same videos and photos. Both operating systems can read and write to that external hard drive format. Update: 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. Best Format For External Hard Drive For Mac And PC The best format when you want to share a hard drive between a Mac and a Windows PC is ExFAT. To format the drive to work with both platforms you will need use a Windows computer to format the disk as exFAT.
DRIVE FORMAT FOR BOTH MAC AND WINDOWS MAC OS X
You must have Mac OS X 10.6.5 or newer, and PCs need to be Windows Vista SP1, Windows 7, or newer.Īlthough it is possible to format a drive as exFAT from Disk Utility on the Mac, that drive will not work with Windows PCs, and that’s not what we’re after. The erase option deletes all the data that was in the drive.Ĭons: Not compatible with older operating systems.

DRIVE FORMAT FOR BOTH MAC AND WINDOWS MAC OSX
Highlight the one that you want to format. Im looking for a format that allows me to read and write on both Windows 10 and Mac OSX that can transfer file sizes that are large such as 20GB. On the left, the connected drives can be seen. On the drop-down box, select the format labeled exFAT.The only hard drive format that can be reliably used by both is called FAT32, or MS-DOS FAT as its called on Mac.


Cons: Can’t handle files that are larger then 4GB in size.
