Format Flash Drive For Mac And Windows 10

1. Windows 10 Format Usb Drive
2. Format Flash Drive For Mac And Windows
3. Format Flash Drive For Mac And Windows 10 32-bit
4. Format Flash Drive For Mac And Windows 10 32-bit
5. Format Usb Flash Drive Windows

Format USB Flash drive to NTFS using Disk Management 1. Find My Computer in the Start menu or by typing it in the search bar. Right-click on it and click on Manage. Format USB Flash Drives to Work With Both Mac and Windows 7 by Jack Scicluna Photography, LLC - guest writer. The latest trend with computers is not including a CD/DVD drive. How to format internal and/or external drive to work properly on Mac and Windows computers? External data storage devices such as USB flash drives, external Hard Disk Drives (HDDs), and Solid State Drives (SSDs) provide one of the easiest ways to transfer files between separate computers without accessing the Internet. Apr 13, 2020 Click on “USB Flash Drive” from the main interface and then on “Burn”. Select 'USB Flash Drive' Once done, click on “OK” on the pop-up window. ISO files have been generated successfully; This is how simple it is to make bootable Windows 10 USB Mac with the help of this tool. Method 2: Use UNetbootin to Install USB Driver. While Windows computers tend to turn a cold shoulder to the Mac community, Apple has always ensured that interoperability between Mac and Windows is a breeze. In fact, when you plug that USB flash drive into your Mac system, it’s quite likely it’s formatted for Windows and you aren’t even aware that the OS is translating file formats invisibly.

Summary :

Want to format an external hard drive for Mac and Windows PC? Do you know how to do this work easily? This MiniTool article will show you specific methods to make external hard drive compatible with Mac and PC, which are easy and safe to complete.

As we know, external hard drives are widely used to backup data or interchange files among different computers. Well, is there an external hard drive that could be shared between Mac and Windows PC? Of course, there is. Actually, most external hard disks could be compatible with Mac and PC as long as you format them correctly.

Why Need to Format External Hard Drive for Mac and PC

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.

Currently, hard drives for Windows PC are always formatted with NTFS, while hard disks for Mac are formatted with HFS+. However, when we connect a NTFS formatted disk to Mac, Mac OS X doesn't allow us to write files to the drive neither edit files, though it can read a NTFS drive. Similarly, Windows OS will ask us to format the HFS+ formatted drive when we connecting such a disk, let along edit files saved on HFS+ formatted hard disks unless we resort to third party programs.

But luckily, there are file systems well supported by both Mac and Windows PC, and they are FAT32 (it might be called MS-DOS on Mac) and exFAT. As long as we format the external hard drive to one of these 2 file systems, it can be shared between Mac and Windows.

Further Reading

Both FAT32 and exFAT have advantages and disadvantages.

FAT32: FAT32 works with all versions of Windows, Mac OS, Linux, game consoles, etc.

However, single files on a FAT32 drive can't be larger than 4GB. If your external drive saves files larger than 4GB or you plan to save larger files to this drive, converting to FAT32 is not recommended.

In addition, a FAT32 partition must be not more than 32GB if you create it in Windows Disk Management. Of course, there is free partition manager that can help create a FAT32 volume up to 2TB, which also functions correctly.

exFAT: exFAT has very large file size and partition size limits, which means it's a good idea to format your external hard drive to exFAT.

Nevertheless, a lot of users complained that exFAT is slow, and they highly suggest using FAT32 if you can avoid file size constraints.

Three Options for Accessing NTFS Drives on Mac

Paid Third-Party Drivers

Some paid third-party NTFS drivers for Mac can be used to access NTFS drives on Mac. They work well and they have better performance than the free solutions which will be mentioned in the following part. Paragon NTFS for Mac is such a driver.

Besides, you can also use the paid third-party file system converters to convert NTFS to FAT32 or exFAT which are compatible with both Mac and PC. MiniTool Partition Wizard is one representative.

Free Third-Party Drivers

FUSE for macOS is a free and open-source NTFS driver that can enable write support. But, this solution is slower relatively. And the automatically mounting NTFS partitions in read-write mode can be a security risk for your Mac computer.

Apple’s Experimental NTFS-Write Support

The Mac OS has an experimental support for writing to NTFS drives. Usually, it is disabled by default and needs some messing around in the Mac terminal to enable it.

It doesn’t work properly all the time and could lead to potential issues with your NTFS file system. For example, it had corrupted data before. Thus, we don’t suggest using this tool and we believe it is disabled by this reason.

Here, we recommend using the paid third-party tools since they are easy-to-use and can do good work for you.

Then, we will introduce these three options for you in the following content.

The Best Paid Third-Party Driver: Paragon NTFS for Mac

Paragon NTFS for Mac can write, edit, delete, copy, or move files on NTFS volumes from your Mac computer. It offers a 10-day free trial. If you want to use it all the time, you need to pay for it.

With it, you don’t have to fiddle with terminal commands to mount partitions manually. Additionally, it can mount partitions automatically and safely. More importantly, it can code with the potential corruption. If you purchase a Seagate drive, you can even get a free download of Paragon NTFS for Mac.

All in all, it does its works well and gives you good user’s experience.

The Best Free Third-Party Drivers: FUSE for macOS

FUSE for macOS is a free solution to access NTFS on Mac. But it is less secure.

If you want to make automatically mount NTFS partitions in read-write mode on Mac, you need to temporarily disable the System Integrity Protection and replace one of Apple’s built-in tools with a binary that is more vulnerable to attack. Thus, your Mac is in danger when using this driver.

However, you can use it to manually mount NTFS partitions in read-write mode if you never mind using the Terminal. This will be safer, but you need to do more work. You can go to google the steps and see how complex they are.

Apple’s Experimental NTFS-Writing Support: Don’t Do This, Seriously

Although we mentioned this method in our article, we still don’t recommend it because it is the least tested. It is just for educational purposes, and it is available on Mac OS 10.12 Sierra. Perhaps, it will be unstable forever.

How to Quickly Format External Hard Drive for Mac and PC without Losing Data

Another way to access NTFS drive on Mac is to convert the NTFS/HFS+ to FAT/exFAT. Then, the drive can be used on both Mac and PC.

There should be some important data on the drive. To keep it safe, you can choose this best NTFS/HFS+ to FAT/exFAT converter: MiniTool Partition Wizard.

How to Convert NTFS to FAT32 or exFAT Without Data Loss

To format hard drive for Mac and Windows without data loss, we suggest using MiniTool Partition Wizard and its 'Convert NTFS to FATS32' function. If you are a personal user, you can try its Professional Edition.

Step 1: Run MiniTool Partition Wizard

Download this software to your computer. Then, you can open the software and input the license key to the pop-out window to get its Professional Edition.

Step 2: Convert NTFS to FAT32 with This Software

After running the program successfully, we can see its main interface as follows:

Here, please select the NTFS partition of external hard drive and choose 'Convert NTFS to FAT' feature from the left action pane. If there is more than one NTFS partition, convert all of them one by one.

At last, click 'Apply' button to make the change executed.

When MiniTool Partition Wizard shows it applies the change successfully, the original NTFS will finally become a FAT32 partition.

By this way, you can easily format an external hard drive for Mac and PC without losing any data. Then, you can share external hard drive between Mac and PC

You Can Convert NTFS to exFAT in 3 Steps

However, if you want to convert NTFS to exFAT to make external hard drive compatible with Mac and PC, 3 steps are required.

Step 1: Transfer Data out from External Hard Drive

You can choose to copy and paste those files to other external devices or internal hard disk of Windows, but it will cost much time. Instead, you can use MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition to create a copy for your external drive, which is faster.

If there is only one NTFS partition on external hard drive, refer to the tutorial Copy Partition to get instructions. However, if there is more than one NTFS partition, view Copy Disk to get specific operations.

Step 2: Create exFAT Partition with MiniTool Partition Wizard

The Free Edition of this software also enables you to do this job.

Firstly, you need to delete the partition by using this software. Just open the software to enter its main interface. Then, choose the target partition and click 'Delete Partition' from the left action pane. After that, you should click 'Apply' to keep this change.

Secondly, the target partition will become unallocated. Here, you need to choose that partition and click on 'Create Partition' from the left action pane.

Thirdly, you will see a pop-out window. Here, you can choose 'exFAT' from the 'File System' setting option. At the same time, you can also set some other parameters for this partition, including 'Partition Label', 'Drive Letter', 'Size And Location'. After that, please click on 'OK'.

Fourthly, you will go back to the main interface. Then, please click on 'Apply' to save these changes.

Finally, an exFAT partition will be created on your external hard disk so that it could be shared between Mac and Windows PC

Step 3: Transfer Data back to External Drive

If you want to share files that you have backed up between Mac and PC, now please transfer these files back to external hard drive.

How to Convert HFS+ to FAT32 or exFAT without Losing Data

Besides, you can format an external hard drive for Mac and Windows by converting HFS+ to FAT32 or exFAT without losing any data.

Step 1: Backup Data in HFS+ Partition on Mac

Just transfer all useful files out from the external hard drive to other devices on Mac. Of course, if you have a backup already, ignore this step.

Step 2: Create a FAT32 or exFAT Partition on Windows PC

Some people may ask why create such partitions on Windows rather than Mac. That is because there are cases reporting FAT32 (MS-DOS) or exFAT partitions created on Mac did not work well on Windows.

Please skip to Solution 1: Format External Hard Drive to FAT32 to get steps to create a FAT32 partitions or go back to Step 2: Create exFAT Partition with MiniTool Partition Wizard to get operations to create an exFAT partition.

How to Make an Empty External Drive Compatible with Mac and PC

If there is no file saved on your external hard drive, how to make external hard drive compatible with Mac and PC?

It's very easy to share it between Mac and PC and you also need a Windows computer, a Mac machine, and the free partition manager MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition.

There are 3 solutions for this case, so please choose the one you like most to format external hard drive Windows 10/8/7.

Solution 1: Format External Hard Drive Windows 10/8/7 to FAT32

Since users are unable to create a FAT32 partition larger than 32GB in Windows Disk Management, they need to use MiniTool Partition Wizard Free.

Please download and install this program on your Windows computer to format an external hard drive for Mac and PC.

Firstly, open the software to enter its main interface as follows. Here, please select the NTFS partition or HFS+ partition of external hard drive, and click 'Delete Partition' feature from the left action pane. If there are multiple partitions on the external disk, please select the disk and click 'Delete All Partitions' feature instead. After that, an unallocated space will be released.

Secondly, you can create one or more FAT32 partitions in unallocated space. Select the unallocated space and choose 'Create Partition' feature from the left side.

Then, you should choose 'FAT32' from the 'File System' option in the pop-out window. Meanwhile, you can set properties for this new partition and click 'OK' to go back to the main window of Partition Wizard.

At last, click 'Apply' button to make all changes performed.

Solution 2: Format External Hard Drive Windows 7/8/10 to exFAT

Firstly, please delete the NTFS or HFS+ partition in either MiniTool Partition Wizard or Windows Disk Management to release unallocated space. Then, you can create an exFAT partition with MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition by following steps introduced in the section Step 2: Create exFAT Partition with MiniTool Partition Wizard.

Once a FAT32 or exFAT partition is created on your external hard drive, you can share it on both Mac and Windows PC.

Solution 3: Create One HFS+ Partition for Mac and One NTFS Partition for Windows

Alternatively, you can create 2 partitions on the external hard drive: one is for Mac, and the other is for Windows. As to size for each partition, it depends on your own demands. By this way, you can easily format an external hard drive for Mac and Windows.

Step 1: Create a NTFS Partition and a FAT32 Partition

Please run MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition, then delete all the original NTFS or HFS+ partition(s), and create a new NTFS partition as well as a FAT32 partition, and the latter will be formatted to HFS+ in Mac machine.

Then, select the external hard drive and choose 'Delete All Partitions' to create an unallocated space.

Here, select the unallocated space and choose 'Create Partition' feature from the left action pane.

Now, please specify partition label (Windows is recommended), partition type (primary or logical), drive letter, file system (NTFS), cluster size, and partition size (you can change the length of the handle to adjust partition size). Then, click 'OK' to continue.

Now, you can see a NTFS partition is created. Please use the same way to create a FAT32 partition labeled with Mac. At last, click 'Apply' button to make all changes performed.

Step 2: Format the FAT32 Partition to HFS+ Partition on Mac

Please go to Utilities → Disk Utility.

Then, select the external hard drive and click 'Partition' tab on the top.

Now, find the FAT32 partition and format it to OS X Extended (Journaled), which is the desired HFS+. Finally, click 'Apply' button to make all changes performed.

After NTFS partition and HFS+ partition are created on your external hard drive, it can be shared between Mac and Windows PC.

Bottom Line

Are you planning to format an external hard drive for Mac and PC? If yes, now try one of our methods to make external hard drive compatible with Mac and PC.

Should you have any problem, just feel free to leave us a message in comment part below or send an email to [email protected].

Format Hard Drive for Mac and PC FAQ

How to format and create a USB drive or pen drive that is compatible with Windows 10, 8, 7 or Mac or Linux.

A file system is a method and structure of data used by an operating system, called Windows, Linux or Mac OS, for reading media files such as disks, removable drives, etc.

Types of File Systems

It is vital that we are aware that each developer implements a series of file systems for their operating system, for example, we have the following:

Windows:

• FAT

• FAT32

• NTFS

• exFAT

Linux:

• ext2

• ext3

• ext4

• ReiserFS

• Swap

Mac OS:

• HFS +

• MS-DOS (FAT)

• exFAT

Windows 10 Format Usb Drive

• APFS (Present in the new edition of macOS High Sierra)

Each system manages its file system and in this way, USB drive with NTFS can only be recognized in Windows environments but not in Linux or macOS environments, even if it is accepted in macOS we can not make changes to it.

At this point, another question arises, what type of file system to use that is compatible with these three operating systems?

In technical terms, it has been recommended that the file system of the USB drives be FAT32 thanks to the fact that it is an old file system and that it has evolved to FAT32 at present, but there is a format that is much better regarding security, reliability, and compatibility: exFAT.

Let’s see in detail what is and what covers each of these file systems.

FAT32:

This format is one of the most compatible, but due to its useful life, it has been in force since the 90s, it has a series of limitations that can affect the pace of updates we are experiencing today.
Being a format with so much active time is compatible with virtually any operating system.

As mentioned, it has its limitations such as the inability to host files larger than 4 GB or that partitions with this file system cannot have more than 8 TB capacity.

exFAT:

exFAT is in a way a more modern and dynamic FAT32 which was developed in 2006 and is present in most modern operating systems.

By default, all traditional operating systems, Windows, Linux or Mac OS are compatible with exFAT, and its use is highly recommended for external drives, such as USB devices or external drives, thanks to its simplicity and multiple features.

Now we will analyze a little more in detail the fields of action where these two file systems are compatible to know which is the best option to choose.

Device Support

This is the first fundamental field since if the USB device formatted with FAT23 or exFAT is not compatible with the device where it has to be connected it will be impossible for it to be recognized and to access its contents.

In this field, we can say that FAT32 has an advantage over exFAT because, being an old file system, it is compatible with all operating systems and devices such as game consoles, Smart TV, multimedia players and others.

ExFAT, although it is currently compatible with more than 95% of the devices on the market, can still find individual limitations in some Linux distros or Android devices.

Format Flash Drive For Mac And Windows

In some Linux distros the exFAT file system will not be recognized immediately, so we must install the several utilities by executing the following line:

Then update the packages running the line:

Reading & Writing Speed

Another of the pillars in a file system is the ability with which this can access the content and read or write it since this depends on optimal performance which is a highly required value today. Undoubtedly in this regard exFAT outperforms FAT32 to be a much more recent technology which is compatible with USB 3.0 which can have a transfer rate up to 5 Gbps.

In the previous graphic of flexense we can see the performance of exFAT on FAT32, and in the following link we will be able to look in detail multiple operations carried out by this software developer called Flexsense

Size of Supported Files

Format Flash Drive For Mac And Windows 10 32-bit

Undoubtedly on this field wins exFAT because, as we mentioned above, FAT32 only allows files with a maximum capacity of 4 GB in partitions that do not exceed 8 TB of storage while exFAT is virtually unlimited in this aspect to support 16ZB files.

How To Format a USB drive with exFAT

Format Flash Drive For Mac And Windows 10 32-bit

Starting from the detail that exFAT is the most practical and functional file system, unless we are not going to use files of more than 4 GB, this is the process of formatting the USB drives with exFAT.

It will first be necessary to install the exFAT tools by executing the following command, as we have mentioned before:

Later we run the fdisk -l line to list the active disks in the system.

There we will locate the USB drive which has the extension /dev/sd** (Replace the ** with the indicated number)
Once the USB disk is identified, we will execute the following syntax:

As we understand, we have the freedom to select the best file system for our USB drives to have the best capacity and performance.

Format Usb Flash Drive Windows