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If you only use a Mac computer, you can format your thumb drive so it can work on Windows systems. Connect the thumb drive to your Mac. Launch Disk Utility, press Command+Space then type: disk.
What is the best file system for USB or external hard drive on Mac? Windows and Mac OS X use different file systems. Windows uses NTFS and Mac can't write files to volumes with NTFS format. So, if you want to use a USB flash drive or an external hard drive with NTFS format on Mac, you should first reformat the devices to the Mac OS Extended file system. It is the best way to ensure full Mac compatibility of a new external hard drive or flash disk. Usually, FAT32 which can be read and wrote on Mac is recommended for maximum compatibility. And if you need to transfer files larger than 4 GB between Macs and Windows computers, exFAT or MS-DOS (FAT) is better.
How to format USB flash drive or external hard drive for Mac But how can you format USB flash drive or external hard drive for Mac? This page will show you two ways to do this job: Format USB or external hard drive for Mac using Mac disk utility Format USB or external hard drive for Mac on Windows PC using third-party 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. Format USB or external hard drive for Mac using Mac Disk utility Windows offers users built-in disk management tool to create, delete, resize, merge and format partitions. You can try the following steps to format USB or external hard drive for Mac with Disk Utility on Mac. Connect the USB or external hard drive to your Mac computer. Launch the Disk Utility by clicking 'Applications' 'Utilities'.
Locate and click on your USB or external hard drive in Disk Utility and then click on 'Erase'. Next to 'Format', click the contextual menu and select 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)'. 5. Reset the drive name and click 'Erase', confirm the operation on the next pop-up window. Wait for the process to complete and then you'll get compatible HFS+ file system on your external hard drive or USB, which will make your device compatible and workable on your Mac. Format USB or external hard drive for Mac using third-party USB format tool on a Windows PC If you need a simpler format tool to format USB or external hard drive to FAT32 to make them work on Mac, you can apply a third-party format tool to format them on Windows PC. EaseUS is a popular disk partition management tool which is available for all hard disk related jobs such as format disk partition, extend system partition, settle low disk space problem.
Now you can try it to format USB or external hard drive on your Windows PC by following the steps below. If you stored important data on the USB or external hard drive, you can try this tool to without formatting.
How to Format Flash Drive on Mac Not every flash drive out there can be used with a Mac computer right out of the box. Some flash drives have to be formatted first before you can store files on them.
In this article, we are taking a closer look at the Disk Utility, which comes with all recent versions of the Mac OS X operating system and how you can use it to format USB drive Mac. Format Flash Drive Mac with Disk Utility Your Mac computer comes with a handy utility appropriately called, which can be used to format any storage device. To use it, first connect the flash drive that you want to format. Then go to Applications and Utilities and launch Disk Utility. The application will appear on the screen, and you will see the main window, with a list of available storage devices on the left and various disk management options on the right. At the bottom of the main window are storage device details, including disk description, connection type, USB serial number, total capacity, write status, S.M.A.R.T. Status, and partition map scheme.
Select your storage device from the list on the left and click on the Erase tab. Before you can click on the Erase button located in the Erase tab, you must select which file system you would like to use and give it a name. If you’re not sure which option you should choose, continue reading this article to find out more information about the main file systems used by Mac OS X and Windows. With everything set, you may click on the Erase button to start the formatting process. Depending on the size and speed of your flash drive, it may take a minute or two. Once the formatting process is finished, you should be able to transfer files to the newly formatted flash drive.
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Understanding File Systems Mac OS X and Windows support different file systems. The main file system of Mac OS X is HFS Plus. It was developed by Apple and first introduced in 1998 as an improved version of HFS, supporting much larger files and using the Unicode encoding.
Microsoft has also developed their file system for Windows, NTFS. This proprietary file system was introduced in 1993, and it supports metadata and advanced data structures to improve performance, additional extensions for improved security, and file system journaling. Unfortunately, these two file systems are not suitable for flash drives because of their limited support. The best file system for modern flash drives is FAT32. Even though FAT32 doesn’t support long file names and only stores files up to 4 GB in size, the fact that it’s almost universally supported across all operating systems makes it perfect for flash drives. How to Recover Data After Format We all make mistakes, and you wouldn’t be the first person in the world to accidentally format a USB flash drive. Disk Drill, a premium data recovery solution for Mac OS X with support for all popular file formats and common storage devices, is here to help you recover from any data loss, no matter how large or small.
Disk Drill’s advanced data recovery algorithms can find lost files even after complete format.